a Siberian costume, and crawl
into a heavy fur bag, may spend a night out-doors in a temperature of
-70 deg. without any serious danger; but if he is tired out, with long
travel, if his clothes are wet with perspiration, or if he has not
enough to eat, he may freeze to death with the thermometer at zero.
The most important rules for an arctic traveller are: to eat plenty of
fat food; to avoid over-exertion and night journeys; and never to
get into a profuse perspiration by violent exercise for the sake of
temporary warmth. I have seen Wandering Chukchis in a region destitute
of wood and in a dangerous temperature, travel all day with aching
feet rather than exhaust their strength by trying to warm them in
running. They would never exercise except when it was absolutely
necessary to keep from freezing. As a natural consequence, they were
almost as fresh at night as they had been in the morning, and if they
failed to find wood for a fire, or were compelled by some unforeseen
exigency to travel throughout the twenty-four hours, they had
the strength to do it. An inexperienced traveller under the same
circumstances, would have exhausted all his energy during the day in
trying to keep perfectly warm; and at night, wet with perspiration and
tired out by too much violent exercise, he would almost inevitably
have frozen to death.

For two hours after supper, Dodd and I sat by the fire, trying
experiments to see what the intense cold would do. About eight o'clock
the heavens became suddenly overcast with clouds, and in less than an
hour the thermometer had risen nearly thirty degrees. Congratulating
ourselves upon this fortunate change in the weather, we crawled into
our fur bags and slept away as much as we could of the long arctic
night.

Our life for the next few days was the same monotonous routine of
riding, camping, and sleeping with which we were already so familiar.
The country over which we passed was generally bleak, desolate, and
uninteresting; the weather was cold enough for discomfort, but not
enough so to make outdoor life dangerous or exciting; the days were
only two or three hours in length and the nights were interminable.
Going into camp early in the afternoon, when the sun disappeared, we
had before us about twenty hours of darkness, in which we must either
amuse ourselves in some way, or sleep. Twenty hours' sleep for any one
but a Rip Van Winkle was rather an over-dose, and during at least half
that time