The Diamond Drill

FROM THE KLONDIKE.

The Man from the Gold Mines Tells About the Weather.

He had just returned from the top of the Chilkat pass and was apparently glad of it.

"How was the weather when you left?" inquired a friend.

"Cold?"

"Yes, but not so bad as it will be along in January, after the mosquitoes get out of the air and let the wind have a chance. Then it gets good and cold. A man told me who had wintered up there seven years that it was so cold in January that they froze the flames of their candles and sold them for strawberries. He said they kept their fires over night by putting them out in the air and letting them freeze and then thawed them out in the morning. He said he had seen four men die of colic from eating whisky that was frozen so hard it wouldn't thaw inside of them. He said the cows all gave ice cream till they froze to death. He said he knew a clerk in a hotel on the Yukon that got rich selling the diamonds he wore, said diamonds being nothing on earth but ice crystals that didn't thaw till after the clerk had got out of the country. He said he had seen a man fall off the roof of a barn and freeze so stiff before he lit that he broke in two when he hit the ground. He said he had seen smoke freeze in a chimney till the fire wouldn't draw, and he knew of one case where the smoke froze after it got 100 feet up and fell back on the house, knocking a hole in the roof big enough to drive a yoke of steers through. He said the reason the nights were so long in that country was that the dark got froze so hard the daylight couldn't thaw its way through in less than six months. He said—"

"Excuse me," interrupted the friend. "did this party have affidavits with these statements?"

"He said he had, but I guess he must have froze to death hunting for them, because he never came back when I asked him to go after them for me," and the returned Chilkat smiled a smile that was childlike and bland.—Washington Star.