In the Arctic Regions.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1893, 23 August 1884, Page 6 (Supplement)

In the Arctic Regions.

" Yes, air," remarked the man who wanted a little more sugar in his. " Yes, sir, De Long and his party had a pretty hard time, but they didn't work it right. I was in the country niue years, and you didn't hear of onr getting into any such scrapes." " Been in the Arctic regions ? '* asked the man who wanted his hotter and hotter with each succeeding glass. " I was there from '67 to '76," replied the man with the saccharine tooth. " I spent four years right where they found De Long, and I made money out of It." "May I ask how ? " inquired a little man in a coon skin cap. " Sending ice to the European market," returned the other, without a blush. "You can't get as pure ice anywhere else, and it brings the highest price. We used to send ifc around to the month of the Lena Biver and slide it to market. I've seen a cake of ice make sixty miles an hoar behind a traction engine 1 " "Didn't the friction wear out the ice any?" asked the man who wanted his hot. " No, sir. No, sir. That ice is so cold and tough that it won't melt or wear. You could couple an engine to it and drag it around the world without losing a pound 1 Why, sir, do you know we found buffalo in the mouth of the Lena River that had been buried in the ice for 6,000 years, and it was as fresh when we took it out as it was when it was killed ? " " Is that so ? " demanded the man in the coon skin cap, eagerly. 11 Yes, sir, I know it ; for I ate it myself, and I never tasted as nice meat in New York." " Thank God I " exclaimed coon skin. " Now I can die happy." "Don't you believe it?" asked the sugar man, angrily. "Bilieve it?" howled coon Skin. "Of course I believe it, but I could never get any one else to. Man alive, I shot tho3e buffalo at the time you say they were buried there, but I could never find the place again, and I couldn't get any capitalist to take any stock in my story and send out an expedition to hunt them up." " What did you shoot them with ? " demanded the Arctic explorer, with a glance of suspicion. "Minie bullets," replied the man in the coon skin, without hesitation. "Didn't find any Minie bullets in those buffalo," snorted the explorer. "OE course not," returned the ooon skin, triumphantly. "It was so cold that the metal had contracted out of sight before I got oat of the country 1 Thank God, those buffalo have been found ! Stranger, did you see anything of the carcass of ad — liar in them parts?" " No, sir," replied the other, indignantly. " P'raps not, p'raps not," muttered the coon skin, reflecting. "I guess that breed didn't get in there until about six thousand years after I got out. Thai; would account for it." And the man in the coon skin ordered a little straight, and a silence fell on the multitude. — Brooklyn Daily Eagle.