Adventure and adventurers > Away in the wilderness, or, Life among the red Indians and fur-traders of North America

AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS.
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Thermometers in England are usually filled
with quicksilver. In Rupert’s Land quicksilver
would be frozen half the winter, so spirit of wine
is used instead, because that liquid will not freeze
with any ordinary degree of cold. Here, the ther¬
mometer sometimes falls as low as zero. Out
there it does not rise so high as zero during the
greater part of the winter, and it is often as
low as twenty, thirty, and even fifty degrees hdow
zero.
If the wind should blow when the cold is in¬
tense, no man dare face it—he would be certain
to be frost-bitten. The parts of the body that are
most easily frozen are the ears, the chin, the cheek¬
bones, the nose, the heels, fingers, and toes. The
freezing of any part begins with a pricking sensa¬
tion. When this occurs at the point of your nose,
it is time to give earnest attention to that feature,
else you run the risk of having it shortened. The
best way to recover it is to rub it well, and to
keep carefully away from the fire.
The likest thing to a frost-bite is a bum. In
fact, the two things are almost the same. In
both cases the skin or flesh is destroyed, and be¬
comes a sore. In the one case it is destroyed by
fire, in the other by frost ; but in both it is
painful and dangerous, according to the depth of
the frost-bite or the bum. Many a poor fellow
loses joints of his toes and fingers—some have