Changes—Harry¹ and Hamilton find that variety is indeed charming—The latter astonishes the former considerably².

Three months passed away, but the snow still lay deep and white and undiminished around York Fort. Winter—cold, silent, unyielding winter—still drew its white mantle³ closely round the lonely dwelling⁴ of the fur-traders of the Far North.

Icicles hung, as they had done for months before, from the eaves of every house, from the tall black scaffold on which the great bell hung, and from the still taller erection that had been put up as an outlook for “the ship” in summer. At the present time it commanded a bleak⁵ view of the frozen sea. Snow covered every housetop, and hung in ponderous⁶ masses from their edges, as if it were about to fall; but it never fell—it hung there in the same position day after day, unmelted, unchanged. Snow covered the whole land, and the frozen river, the swamps, the sea-beach, and the sea itself, as far as the eye could reach, seemed like a pure white carpet. Snow lined the upper edge of every paling, filled up the key-hole of every door, embanked about half of every window, stuck in little knobs on the top of every picket⁷, and clung in masses on every drooping⁸ branch of the pine trees in the forest. Frost—sharp, biting frost—solidified, surrounded, and pervaded⁹ everything. Mercury was congealed¹⁰ by it; vapour was condensed by it; iron was cooled by it until it could scarcely be touched without (as the men expressed it) “burning” the fingers. The water-jugs in Bachelors’ Hall and the water-buckets were frozen by it, nearly to the bottom; though there was a good stove there, and the Hall was not usually a cold place by any means. The breath of the inhabitants was congealed by it on the window-panes, until they had become coated with ice an inch thick. The breath of the men was rendered white and

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