Long before winter had passed, our town had disappeared as completely as Nineveh or Pompeii. Only an uncertain mound here and there projected over the bleak slope of drifted snow. Some of the storehouses, indeed, were so effectively hidden that they were not found till after several days’ excavations in the following July. The great advantage of a snow-house is that it takes its temperature from the earth, and not from the air. Some of ours were occasionally as much as forty degrees warmer than the atmosphere, so that an observer well muffled in furs could remain for four or five hours at a time watching the swinging magnetic needle, or the progress of some icy experiment. His meditations would sometimes be disturbed by the wandering footfall of one of our dogs overhead, sounding strangely loud and reverberating. The snow was curiously retentive of odours: a little spirit spilt in one house made it ever afterwards smell like a gin-palace; another had an unaccountable odour of oysters that puzzled all our _savans_; but, as a rule, the smell of burnt candle predominated. The manner, by-the-bye, in which the flame of a candle gradually sank into a tallowy net-work cylinder afforded a striking illustration of the still air and low temperature of a snow-house. In strong moonlight, or after daylight returned, the effect inside one of our buildings was most peculiar. The snow transmits a subdued greenish-blue light, such as a diver sees deep under water. [Illustration: BUILDING SNOW-HOUSES.]