The old timers here tell me that the dreariness of the long nights of the winter has been greatly exaggerated. During that season most of the earth is snow-clad, and the light of the sky, the stars, and the moon reflected from the snow makes it so that one can work outside almost all the time. True, it is necessary to have lights in the schools, and in the newspaper offices the electricity is turned off only between 11:15 in the morning and 2:15 in the afternoon. The morning newspaper men who sleep in the day do not see the sun except upon Sunday. In the coldest part of the winter the snow makes travelling difficult. It is then so dry that the dogs pulling the sleds have to work as hard as though they were going through sand. In March and April the snow is not so powdery and sleighing is easier. The ideal winter weather is when the thermometer registers fifteen or twenty-five degrees below zero, with a few hours of sunlight. The most depressing time is from the middle of December until the end of the first week in January. Then comes the most severe cold, and the sun may not be seen at all. It is this midwinter period that is described in many of the gruesome poems of the Yukon, especially in Service’s “Cremation of Sam McGee.” You remember how Sam McGee left his home in sunny Tennessee to roam around the North Pole, where: He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell; Though he’d often say in his homely way that he’d sooner live in hell. The poet describes how Sam froze to death on the trail above Dawson and how, before he died, he made his partner promise to “cremate his last remains.” This was done, between here and White Horse, on the “marge of Lake Lebarge.” There the frozen corpse was stuffed into the furnace of the derelict steamer _Alice May_ and a great fire built. Sam McGee’s partner describes “how the heavens scowled and the huskies howled, and the winds began to blow,” and how, “though he was sick with dread, he bravely said: I’ll just take a peep inside.’” He then opens the furnace door: And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar; And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door. It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm----. Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.” [Illustration: Yukon Territory is said to have thirty-eight million acres of land that can be utilized for crops or grazing. Above the Arctic Circle red-top grass, which is used as hay, grows almost as high as a man.] [Illustration: Land on the upper Yukon will yield six or seven tons of potatoes an acre. Sometimes prices are so high that one crop from this seventeen-acre field has brought in ten thousand dollars.] CHAPTER XXXIV FARMING ON THE EDGE OF THE ARCTIC