Part 10 (2/2)
Another tihtfall, and Grenfell and his coe six miles distant
They lost their way, and found thehtfall at the foot of steep cliffs which they could not get round, though the village was hardly hts twinkled them a war to do was to fight their way up and over the rocks As they came to the top, they found two tired men who knew the way, but were so weary they had ht
But Grenfell started a fire, and served out some bits of sweet cake he carried: so that presently they took heart to go on If they had not done so, they ht was bitterly cold and they were perspiring fro as stiff as suits of armor with the ice As it was, the whole party reached the village safely, and ca them in
A lumber mill was started on a bay sixtythree tons was landed and set in place with the whole neighborhood helping After Christs from St Anthony
There was no trail Most of the way the journey was through virgin forest There indfalls and stu no end of pitfalls where aand helpless as a wounded caribou till he died
nobody they could find had ever made the trip But they had to knoithout delay how the boiler worked and how the ay as a circus parade, telling themselves they would do the distance in two days
Not so At the end of two days they were still wrangling with s and the pointed rocks treacherously sheeted with ice and snow
If they struggled to the top of a snow-laden spruce for an outlook, all they saaslandscape of white-clad woods and lonesoht into the thick of the worst places
They took the wrong turning to get round a big hill, and found a river which they thought would lead them to the head of the bay where thetorrent, which leapt a holes in the ice into which the dogs fell, snarling their traces and their te
Still the brave little beasts of burden strained and tugged forward, encouraged by the shouts of the et away from the river, for the banks were too steep
By and by they reached a ravine where the water boiled and churned and raced along in its great rocky trough too rapidly to be frozen, even by the intense cold that prevailed It seemed as if they must be halted here--but that is not the ithto do was to chop a passage through the ice along the bank--like ht their way through the narrows, they yearned for sleep So they built a fire, and felled tree-trunks twenty feet long into it, till they had a ”gorgeous blaze” Then they dug holes in the snow, deep as bear's dens, broke loose fros, and slept the sleep of the just till the golden sun war
The rest of the way gave theot a royal welcoreat event, in fact, that a holiday was declared, and all hands went ”rabbiting” At the end of the day they built anothercocoa and pork buns, and decided all over again that life orth living and thata lumber-mill on an Arctic fore-shore is sheer fun, if you only think so
Not long after an experiun The farm part of it is not so hard as the foxes All you need for the far
They picked up a dozen couples of foxes--red, white, cross, and one silver pair A Harvard professor describes ht on the little steamer to St Anthony ”Dr Grenfell at one time had fifteen little foxes aboard Soht aboard in blubber casks, and their coats were very sticky After a few days they were very tas; they were all over the deck, fell down the co their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, when not yelling for food The long-suffering seaman who took care of them said, 'I been cleaned out dat fox box It do be shockin' I been in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis be de head smell ever I witnessed'”
[Illustration: CASTLES AND CATHEDRALS OF ICE AFLOAT]
Probably the fox farm suffered from too much publicity A mother silver fox is one of the scariest of creatures, and is known to ”kill her children to save their lives” when a thunderstor Most fox farms are therefore in the depths of the woods: and the path to them is kept a dark secret by the owners
But the farreen to the business, and they let the fisher what the consequences would be The red and the cross foxes seeuests; not so with the white foxes, and the precious silver foxes were the shyest of all Not a pup lived to grow up Many were born, but their parents killed the the anilass fraetables
But others, with more science at their command, developed a profitable industry in Quebec, Labrador and in Prince Edward Island In the year the war began a silver vixen and her brood were sold for ten thousand dollars A wild fox, sold for twenty-five dollars, was resold for a thousand There is money in the business, properly conducted For those ild aniht that to get fox fur by way of breeding is infinitely et it by way of the trap, whose cruel teethtill the hunter comes
V
SOME REAL SEA-DOGS