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"The play of the 'Islanders' was formed in December, 1827, in the following manner: One night, about the time when cold sleet and stormy fogs of November are succeeded by the snowstorms and high, piercing night-winds of confirmed winter, we were all sitting round the warm blazing kitchen fire, having just concluded a quarrel with Tabby concerning the propriety of lighting a candle, from which she came off victorious, no candle having been produced.

It was to have been the Thermopylae of Mormondom but it wasn't general Wells was to have done Leonidas but he didn't. The wild snowstorms have left us and we have thrown our wolf-skin overcoats aside. Certain tribes of far-western Indians bury their distinguished dead by placing them high in air and covering them with valuable furs that is a very fair representation of these mid-air tombs.

Is it yore notion we'd oughta sit around with our hands in our pockets, Blister, while reptiles like this Houck make our girls swim the river at night an' plough barefoot through snowstorms? I ain't that easy-dispositioned myself." "Shorty's sure whistlin'. Same here," another chap-clad rider chipped in. "An' here." Blister dropped into the background inconspicuously and vanished.

But these lowland snowstorms and their effects quickly vanish; every crystal melts in a day or two, the bent branches rise again, and the rain resumes its sway. While these gracious rains are searching the roots of the lowlands, corresponding snows are busy along the heights of the Cascade Mountains.

The heavy snowstorms had made the roads almost impassable, but in spite of great difficulties the loading was carried on; slowly, it is true, but with dogged perseverance. The frost had become keen, and large floes of ice were rushed down the reaches by the swift current.

The river was swollen, there were incessant snowstorms, and ice formed heavily, so that it took twenty days of toil and cold before Denny reached Wheeling and got horses. For ten days more he rode over the bad winter roads, reaching Philadelphia with the evil tidings on the evening of December 19th.

The Paramos are sandy plains, in fact, mountain deserts, in the dry season liable to great droughts, and in the wet season to fearful snowstorms. The armies of Independence, during the wars between Spain and South America, suffered terrible hardships and exposures in the Paramos. The Pampas are wide and level plains, not so high as the table lands, where graze innumerable herds of wild cattle.

Yes, it comes to me that it must be he who, during the long six months of winter, causes cruel snowstorms from the plain to invade the town, and with frost compresses the buildings of the town until their rafters crack, and stinging cold brings birds to the ground.

One remembers the frequent disappointments that came to such intrepid climbers as Whymper in Ecuador, Martin Conway in Bolivia and Fitzgerald in Chile and Argentina, due to high winds, the sudden advent of terrific snowstorms and the weakness caused by soroche. At the cost of carrying extra-heavy loads we determined to try to avoid being obliged to turn back.

A what-not with semi-globular glass paperweights, enclosing miniature pictures of ships, New England rural snowstorms, and the like; sea-shells with Bible texts carved on them in cameo style; native curios; whale's tooth with full-rigged ship carved on it. There was nothing reminiscent of foreign parts, for nobody had been abroad.