HOW IT FEELS TO FREEZE. A Drowsy Death-Not so Hard to Die as to Awake.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 308, 17 October 1888, Page 3

HOW IT FEELS TO FREEZE. A Drowsy Death-Not so Hard to Die as to Awake.

Tnh question, '1& leath from intense cold painless?' is answGted by a writer in ' Chambers' Journa l' fi.nnhisownexperience one day in the Pennine Alps. After a lufc July climb to the snow line, in which the traveller went oufc of his way infrequent excursions for beautiful object 0 , and did not eat, the ?umet and the <apid eha'ige to intense cold took place. Poorly pi epaied lo enduie the iransition. the writer te'.t a peculiar appearance it) alt his surrounding^. ' Everything: looked haay to my vision — even the snow and the locks lying about, looked as if enveloped in a fog, although the afternoon was beauiifully clear. c Then 1 felt that I must sit down and enjoy it; but thn guide's flask of Kiischwasser set me going again. Very soon, however, the former feeling returned, nut the same treatment temporarily recoveied me. At last I took to stumbling along, fell down several tim< s, and at length could not help myself. My companions urged me in vain to arou&e to one more effort, but it was useless. Two monks from the hospice were brought to the rescue, and they and the guide took me in hand, and shaking me up made my hands clasp a belt round the guide's waist, and each oi the monks took an arm,' and thus pulied me Lh rough the seven and a-half miles to hospice. ' The sensations of that journey, during occasional gleams of consciousness,' the writer , continues, 'will never be erased from my mind. Is there such an essence of ecstatic delight as elixir mortis ? If there is it must have been something like it or the very thing itself vhich I enjoyed that day. No words can possibly express the surprising desire which I felt to .sit down and enjoy my felicity — and sleep. But my inex01 able friends knew that sleep meant death, and though my repeated appeals of ' Doucement, douccr.ent !' were plaintive enough, fchey were met by redoubled efforts to force mo onward, even when my own leys would not move any longer During the sustained efforts of the three men 1 had but momentary glimpses of con-, sciousne,«s. I remember seoing two somethings black, one on each side, but very indistinct. These, of course, were the friendly monks.' It is not long since one of the brightest and most daring spirits in the revolving circlo at the capital put herself into an everlasting sleep. She had danced eveiy figure of a long cotillon, and came hotre j covered with as many decora t.ions as a foreign General. With vmeon&cious sarcasm she gave orders not to be disturbed until she rang the bell.