It was so cold and we were so crowded that I arose at three and made a fire and sat over it the rest of the night, and after breakfast, although it was Sunday, morning prayer being said, I started ahead again to break out the trail deeper and wider, leaving the teams with the distributed loads to follow. The thermometer stood at 38° below zero when I left camp, but as I began the descent it was evident that it grew colder, and at the bottom of the hill I was sure it was 20° colder at least. Reaching the cabin, I kindled a fire and started back to meet the teams. About a mile from the cabin I saw them, for, since the load was distributed in the two sleds progress was much better; but by this time it had grown so cold that the dogs were almost entirely obscured from view by the clouds of steam that encompassed them. We hurried as best we might and reached the cabin about eleven, and as soon as we were arrived I took out the thermometer and let it lie long enough to get the temperature of the air, and it read 65° below zero. There had been no atmospheric change at all; it was simply the most marked instance I ever knew of the influence of altitude upon temperature. We had descended perhaps three hundred feet, and in that distance had found a difference of 27° in temperature. The cabin was a wretched shack without door or window and full of holes, and in no part of it could one stand upright. We set ourselves to make things as comfortable as possible, however, rigging up the canvas sled cover for an outer door and a blanket for an inner door, and stopping up the worst of the holes with sacking. Then we went out and cut fresh spruce boughs to lie upon, and prospected around quite a while before we found dry wood nearly a quarter of a mile away. It was quite a business cutting that wood and packing the heavy sticks on one's shoulders, through the brush and up and down the banks of the little creek where it grew, on snow-shoes, at 65° below zero. Our Sabbath day's journey done, the hut safely reached and furnished with fuel, we did not linger long after supper, but, evening prayer said, went to bed as the most comfortable place in the still cold cabin, thankful not to be in a tent in such severe weather.