winter brings its skating as a matter of course, there
should be no word for it. "Skate" in English, and patiner in French,
mean propelling oneself on iron runners over ice, and nothing else;
whereas in German there is only the clumsy compound-word
Schlittschuh-laufen, which means "to run on sledge shoes," and in
Russian it is called in equally roundabout fashion Katatsa-na-konkach,
or literally "to roll on little horses," hardly a felicitous
expression. As a rule people have no word for expressing a thing which
does not come within their own range of experience; for instance, no
one would expect that Arabs, or Somalis, or the inhabitants of the
Sahara would have any equivalent for either skating or tobogganing, nor
do I imagine that the Eskimo have any expression for "sunstroke" or
"heat-apoplexy," but one would have thought that Russians and Germans
might have evolved a word for skating.

Apropos of Eskimo, I once heard a missionary describe the extraordinary
difficulty he had found in translating the Bible into Eskimo. It was
useless to talk of corn or wine to a people who did not know even what
they meant, so he had to use equivalents within their powers of
comprehension. Thus in the Eskimo version of the Scriptures the miracle
of Cana of Galilee is described as turning the water into BLUBBER; the
8th verse of the 5th chapter of the First Epistle of St. Peter ran:
"Your adversary the devil, as a roaring Polar BEAR walketh about,
seeking whom he may devour." In the same way "A land flowing with milk
and honey" became "A land flowing with whale's blubber," and throughout
the New Testament the words "Lamb of God" had to be translated "little
Seal of God," as the nearest possible equivalent. The missionary added
that his converts had the lowest opinion of Jonah for not having
utilised his exceptional opportunities by killing and eating the whale.

Fired by the example of the builders of the ice-palace on the rink at
Rideau Hall, I offered to build for the Lansdowne children an ice-hut
for their very own, a chilly domicile which they had ardently longed
for. As it is my solitary achievement as an architect, I must dwell
rather lovingly on the building of this hut. The professional
ice-cutters were bringing up daily a large supply of great gleaming
transparent blocks from the river, both for the building of the
band-house and for the summer supply of Rideau Hall, so there was no
lack of material. On the American continen