The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

An Arctic Outpost Br H«rbert Patrick Lee. What happened to three members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, forming the "Top-of-the- World Patrol," while stationed at the loneliest outpost in the world. **The facts are true in every detail," writes Mr. Lee, "and can easily be confirmed by reference to the annual report of the Mounted Police for 1924." In 1923-24 there were threa of ua gar- risoning the Royal Canadian Mounted Police post at Craig Harbor, Ell«smere Land â€" Corporal Michel«on, Constable Anstead, and myselt. We were, wltli the exception of two tamHles of North Greenland E^sikimos brought down from Etah, the only Inhabitants of the vast etehty-thousand-square-mlle area «t frozen EU'esmere, the last land be- fore the Pole, and one tiny group of fram« shaclts on the shore of Jones Sound constituted the most northern permanent habitation of white men -and th« loneldeat outpost In the worW." After we had built the post. In the rammer of 1922, seven of us were left behind when the CanaJlan Govern- ment patrol steamer Arctic sailed for home. But when the stout old ship returned the foJlicwiDg year, on her annual trip to the Mounted Police poets In the Eastern Arctic, she car- ried oft Inspector Wilcox and three men to biilld another new post In Southern Baffin Land. The remaining three of us were left at Craig Harbor. It is impossible to convey to home- keeping folks the utter desolation, bit- ter loneliness, and terrible iso'letlon of that little post. When the Arctic steamed south for Quebec after her short visit with the yearly mall we »tood on the rocky shore and watclied her go. waitinjj until her tall masts ' â- lipped out of sight behind a towerir.g bUie-green icebf-rg and the hoarse boom of her siren sounded a last fare- well. "* It was soranffe to feel, when at last we turned toward the little group of S'hackfl-a frame house, a store, and a blubbeT-ehedâ€" that v.e were alone In -a mifiioii sqiiaro mlies of wilrierne'Sa, left to spend twe!\e lens weary months until the Arctic came again to Blles.mere. Northwards no human be- ing ex'ste-1; for s!.x hundred and fifty miles to the Vole and beyond, down Into the plains of Siberia on the op- posite side of the earth, no living man breathed. Westward frtretched a vast area of frozen aea »nd barren island, half of whith had never yet been scaunEd by the eye of while man. Southward lay three hundred and fifty miles of rug- ged ice and treacherous open water between Craig Hcrbor and Pond's In- let, it-elf a mere scattering of native Ig-loos on the northern tip of Baffin Land, aJnios't as completely isolated as our own wretched habitation. Such wasâ€" and is â€" Craig Harbor, the nuist northerly pest in the service of the M runted Police. The.-e Is no way of ♦â- â- scape; no meflns of communi- cating with the outside world, except by long sled journeys through an un- Inhabitwl wilderness, acrosa treacher- ous moving loe-flces, and over Bteeip glaciers to avoid stretches of icy bl^ack wat;'r along the barren coasts. As for Ellesmere Land itself, it Is a huge, rugged expanse of desolation, half covered with heavy g'acler Ice, â- wept by terrible gales which bear down upon it from the Pole, and stud- ded with hu^e glaciers, bare, nuked cfllffs, and barren valleys That la EUesitrore Land, the home of ttiree white men and half-a-dozen Eskimos. It us«:I to make H.s laugh when we read about the Barren Landsâ€" the so-" called uninhabitable wilderness of northern Canada and Alaska- -.hun- dreds of miles to the south- ward, \vhcre there, were trees and flowers,' files and mosqui- toes, and where the heat in sum- mer causes discomfort to animals and iiuman beings. The nearest tree to EUesimt're Land is over a thousand miles away. But we made the post as comfortable as lossible, and if we could have ouly been dead-sure that the sMp would ooone ea<h year to Craig Harbor, life would not have been so bad. Even the long, dark -vintcr, when the siun sank below the southern horizon for three and a half months, could be borne with vatlonce, heaner.ed with the know- ledge that when summer came again the glrirlo'.is lite-giving orb would shine Above the hcrizon for a similar period without jetting. And there were hunting trips to ob- tain meat for ourselves and the forty- odd dogs we kept at Craig Harbor, and exploration Journeys into the unknown interior and along the little known coa«t, with our shack on the rocky shore of .Jones Sound as "home" and centre of lite in that frozen wlldernea*. In winter, soon afte.r the harbor fi-o»e in Septemberâ€" to remain solid until the following July â€" we would build a wall of snow packed »ix feet thtok ab;iait the living-house and lay flat bOocks on the s.xn>!ug roof to make the stn)»-tu're airtight. FW water we U8©d\ce, huge chunk.i of It, chopped from ic-ttbeo-gs glrauded in the bay and hauled a^-bore by dog team and stack- ed be.S'ide the ixwt. When we need«d It for water It was placed to melt In a ^Ig »te«^ drum beside the cookstOT* In the kitchen. The hou6« ItS'?Jf was composed of three r<H>ni»: a general living and â- leeplng-rfw.m, an "office" where w« Kept official papers, and the kitchen. A porfh built of sacked coal, brought tip from Qmbo,' for tl;e three stores w^Kb kt>ivt ilv!: hull'lin? warm In vi[n- U>r, .i^twiocli^d tiie door from Ut« Muk zards which at times swept down from tile north with a fury unheard of in civilization. , At the beginning of February, 1924, Corporal Micheleon was alone In the po«t with the Eskimo women and children, who lived in a shack built of empty packing-cases, banked with, snow, be«lde the blubber-shed. i The dark months of winter had ex- hausted our fresh meat supply, and seveiral days before the ami returned to EUesmere Anstead and I started out with our dog-teams to search the val- I leys of western Elle&mere Land for ' muak-oxen or caribou. Anstead took the youngw of our two Eskimos, a man najned Klisshoo, while I took Panlk-pa, the old walrus-hunter from Etah, who years before had been one of Peary's dog-drlvexs on the trip U> the North Pole. j I returned to Craig Harbor on Febr- uary 20th, after an absence of four- teen days, bringing In several hun- dred pounds of musk-ox meat obtained In a fiord a hundred mllee west of the poet. Anstead came back the follow- ing dal, having drawn blank after a trip up a sixty-flve-mile Inlet never be- fore seen by a white man. j The fateful 22nd of February was bitterly coW. Outside the shack a bl;zzard raged as the fierce wind drove flouds of snow down upon us from the mountains. We could not I venture outside and sat beside the , stove, drying and repairing the fur 'clothing brought back from the hunt- ing tripa. i Corporal Michelson and I were plan- I ning another Journey, to get the re- mainder of the niu.'^k-oxen meat 1 had c.i^hed in a snow Igloo at the mouth of Grisa Kiord. We intended, if the I \. eather i,€rmlue<l, to start the follow- ing day. ' At three o'clock In the afternoon we were .ill in the kitchen. Anstead was : cooking dinner, the corporal was lay- ing the table, and I was making a new ' coal-oil stove to take wlih us on the trip. Suddenly Anstead noticed smoke ! pouring from the living-room. In a flash we dashed from the kitchen into the other room to find a mass of smoke iand flameâ€" the building was on fire! The hp.at from the stove-pipe had ap- parently cause 1 the inner celling to burst into flame, and In a trice the j whole roof was ablaze. I It was a terrible sihock. For a mo- ' ment we stood horrified, too stunned to act. Then Anstead rushed for the , fire extinguishers, tearing them one ; after the other from their brackets on the walls, only to find them frozen and ! useies*. We had no water in the [ house. The steel drum beside the kitchen stove was still full of ice and the only liquid available was a half- empty bucket of s.lops. I Snatching up the pail, I climbed ' through the trap-door in the kitchen 'ceiling and into the loft, now full of acrid smoke in which It was well-nigh : Impossible to breathe. Down at the other end of the tunnel formed by the sloping outer roof, the inner ceiling was burning fiercely and the outer tar- i covered roof had begun to catch. j Creeping as near as I dared, I flung the water on the flame», and then, half-chcked by the simoke and fumes, I crept back again along the tunnel and almost fell into tho hatchway. The little drop of water had scarcely af- fected the ames, and as I descended to the kitchen I could see tliean leaj)- Ing higher, for the wind was catching them auvl sucking them through the cuter roof. I Meanwhile, down below, the other two men were waging an unequal bat- tle against hopeless odds. Outside the storm raged fiercely. It was impos- sible to stx' a single yard through the blinding snow, hurled down from the huge glacif>r behind the post by the huudred-niiKee-an-hour* gale. Snatch- ing up a heavy parka of fur, Anstead forced open the door and ran into the storm., struggling across the storm- swept valley to rouse the Eskimoa. It seemed to the cori>oral and 1 that we should never see him again, and how he found his way to the blubber-shed In that awful blizzard I do not know. ; There was little time to dress In furs, and, halfolod ae we were, we tried to cut a h^'.e In the outer roof through which we could throw snow-blocks down to the burning shack below. Aid'- ed by the others, I cHrabod to the snow-covered sloping roof, striving desperately to Keep my tnlanoe In the teeth of the stcrni. But It was wxjrse than hopeflese. Try as I would I couild ] not prevent myself from being blown bodily from the roof, nor could the , oth«r» p<M»s up the blocks with their 1 half-fixxzen hands. And as we worked ; the gale increased In violence. I Numb with ccld we ran to the ooal- j sack porch, sick with fear that the en- tire house was doomed. There was no I way of fighting the flrev and we set ourselves to the task of saving as much as possible before the building was totally destroyed. J Forming a Hue, we passed out what I w<e could to the Esklmios. who, muffled I in their fuxs, crouched In the shelter i of the snow-wall outshle.. .-MtogH^ther I we managed to save the bedding, the iatee{^n<-t>a<fl, % titUe v^rsooal kit. STEADY PROGRESS IN HISTORIC SITES WOtlK Aeriuil view .of a forest fire taken loet season. Some idjea of the advant- ages of the use of th©* aeroplane in detecting and suippressing fires' In otur forests may be gained from this picture. The fire-fighters, summoned by radio meesagie from the detecting plane, ape ruslied to the scene In a largeir aircraft. Before tliey land the warden In charge Is able to locate the nearest water supply, note the dtreotlon of the windrand generally lay out his plans for attacking the fire. Th« mmldng of historic sites which are deemed to be of national import- ance by the Historic Sites and Mon- uments Board of Canada, and which are recommended by that body to the Department of the Interior, for action, is going forward steadily. This work along with that of restor- ation and preservation is being car- ried on by the Canadian National Parks Branch. Eighteen sites of this nature have already been dealt with in the Maritime Provinces. WheriB possible a suitably engraved bronze tablet is affixed to a wall or j pillar of the building with which the' event to be commemorated is associ- ated. In the case of a site of a de- stroyed building or of a battlefield the tablet is placed on a standard in the form of a large ix>ulder or a cairn constructed of rubble stone con- veniently located for the visiting public The sites referred to above are situated as follows:â€" NOVA SCOTIA. Louisljourg, Cape Breton, ruins of rifles, a case of ammunition, some kit- provlsed bunk they had built against chen utensils, and other things which the wall we slmixly hurled through the win- 1 The other fellowrs were asleep, and ^ dow3 as the storm drove the flames • I was about to blow out the candle and ' o\d French fort erected 1720. higher. doze off, when I noticed the yellow i Fort Cumberland, near Amherst, The Eskimos worked Hike mad, Ig- ' flame flicker and grow dim, as if it ' formerly old French Fort Beause- jour, erected in the miildle of the seventeenth century. Fort Edward, at Windsor, erected 1750, on the site of old French Fort noring the frost-bite w-hlch stung their ^ were going out. At the same mo- wind-Iaehed cheeks as they pushed the ment my head began to swim and I salvaged gear across to the blubber- felt dizzy, shed on one of the big sleds. j -fiuddenly It dawned on me that there It Is useless to attempt to describe must be something wrong with the I Piziquid. the scene properly, for this was no or- stove. Weakly I slipped from the bench Fort Anne, Annapolis Royal, one of dinary fire. Even had it been fine and started to walk across the shack the most notable sites in North Am- weather, it would have been a calamity to see what was the matter. My knees ' erica, dating back to 1604. to lose the hut â€" our only home In this wobbled, and before I could reach the ' Port Lawrence, near Amherst, vast wildemesa of desolation. But stove I fell in a dead faint against the erected in 1750. in such a storm as this the destruction door, striking it with s-uch force that ' Champlain's Habitation Lower of the shack threatened to become a it crashed open and 1 pitched out on Granville, site of building erected tragedy. We could not even see. The to the snow outside. gale drove the snow Into our eyes. The noise awakened Anstead and he freezing our lashes, while the bitter leapt from his bunk to investigate. 1605. Halifax, tablet on the wall of the I*i-ovince House commemorating th« setting up of the first printing preas in Canada, March 23, 1752. Halifax, tablet in the dockyard marking the site of the first dockyard in Canada, 1751. Shelbume, tablet on a large l>ou]der to recall the founding of this United Empire Loyalist town of Nov» Scotia. 1783. PRINCE EDWABD ISLA.ND. Charlottetown, tablet on a pillar at the entrance to the Provincial Building to commemorate events of outstanding importance associated with the history of Prince Edward Island. NEW BRUNSWICK. Fort Meduetic, near Woodstock, chief stronghold of the Malise^yt In- dians in Acadia in 17th and 13th centuries. St. John, tablet in market square to commemorate the landing of th» United Empire Loyalists, 1783. Fort Charnisay, St. John, erected 1645. Fort La Tour, St. John, erected 1631. Campt>eIlton, tablet to commemor- ate the last naval battle in North American waters in the Seven Years War, Restigouche River, 1760. Fort Monckton, near Port Elgin, formerly old Fort Gaspereaux, erect- ed by the French, 1750. Fort Nahwaak, Devon, erected 1692. Bathurst, tablet to commemorate the public services of Nicolas Denys, appointed Goveraor and Lieutenant- General of the Coasts and Islands of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 1654. codi blackened the flesh of our ex- posed cheeks and wrists. The ther- Corporal Michelson, too, woke up, and grogglly dropped from his "upper moma-ter, I may mention, registered . berth" â€" only to collapse and fall un- flfty-flve degrees b^low zero. Stumbling blindly across the snow. One Way. O joy, joy, joy to fill The day with leagues! go thy way, all things say. conscious. Feeling iimself giving way. Anstead away from'the doomed buildingâ€" now' qu'ckly thrust on his sealskin boots Thou hast thy way to go, thou hast a glowing mass set in a whirling bl-an- and rushed for the open air. In a few thy day kft of whiteâ€" we reached the cliffs, minutes the ^hed was cleared of the To live; thou hast thy need of thee and literaily felt our way along the deadly fumes from the s.tove and our ^ to make rocks to the blubber-shed. Here we lives, for the second time, were saved. In the heart of others; do thy thing; rested for a few minutes, utterly ex- but only by the narrow margin of the hausted. Then I remembered two Aic^kering candle flame, mother-dogs and their puppies, crouch- 1 The cold air speedily revived the cor- ing in small snow-houses we had built Vor-^l and Anstead dragged me inside for Uiem beside the door of the house. ' the shed, where for some minutes I lay yea, slake The world's great thirst for yet an- other man! And be thou sure of this! no other can The mothers would perish, I knew, on the floor with a blanket over me Do for thee that appointed thee of rather than leave their little ones. while the other men extinguished the fire in the stove. Somehow or other I found my wayi ,, , , , , ,, j ac«>ss the valley to the burning house I* ^^^ ^een a very close call, and and reached the frightened dofs, hug-' ""« ''* "''' °"^ ^'^"^ ^° ""^"^ '^^'''^â- 'â-  God. â€" Dixon, in "Christ's Company." ,) Jersey Justice in Elngland. While the Hall-Mills trial dragged For the remainder of the night we liay in our sleeping-bags without a fire, i .....,, IT"! preferring to shiver until daybreak' It was evident that in a short ,. ., .u â-  . « i, . rather than run the risk of being ^ through one solid month of trivialities "gassed" again. and technicalities, a similar murder Next morning, the Eskimos, whose . , , . „ , , home of boxes was next to the blubber- 1 ^nal was prosecuted in England, says glng their howling puppies to them in Uie shadow of the crumbling snow wall time they woult" all have been buried beneath the mae« of melting ice, which froae almost iminediately it struck the S^"""**- 'shed, told ua that they had heard | an American writer. Alfonso Smith, The porch had long since collapsed, gtrange noises during the night, but former officer of the Dragoon Guards !!.'!.1,.*1.'t",^KL"^',';'!'^l^'',!.^'!? '^^'l '"^" \'°. ^^^^^^^^ l^,.^"â„¢* "^^^I^^^ grandson of a Canadian railway y^ ® j builder, was charged with the mur- they I jgj. g£ John Derham, hockey player which it had been built was now a g^j ^^^ ^^.^^^ ^^a the matter, mass of red, blazing embers, licking ;^â- ondered rather grimly how up weirdly through the storm. Drag- would_ have_ been an _aw;f ul siiock to | ^^ j l.now-student"" with'Tmith"' at Eton and Cahibridge. It was a mur- der as sordid as that in New Jersey, Smith's wife having b>een the object ging the dogs out, I carried first one gfjg.^ a c-ouple of days or so, dead in ; set of pups and then the other to the ^y^^J. beds in the gas-fllleii shed. It blubber-slied,, sheltering them in my „[>ui,i haveb een an awful shock to arms while the mothers ran to find ti^em." and there is little doubt that shelter as they alone knew how. j ^^^^y ^vou'.d immediately have packed The blubber-siied was filled with a their sleds and returned three hundred heap of half-frozen walrus meat, upon mile.s across the Ice to Etah, too terri- which lay the pile of snow-filled bed- fled to remain at Craig Harbor, ding and other gear salvaged from the , Then, when the Arctic returned In burning shack. Corporal Michelson, \ August, there would have been no aus- we discovered, was badly fi»zen, and ; werhig rifle-shots when her siren when his hands and face thawed they | boomed across the harbor, and ouly a were covered with large and painful deathly silen'ce wpuld have greeted her blisters. landing-party. Somehow we made a meal, and then. But tho proverbial "luck of the dog-tired, we lay down to sleep, the Mounted" was with us again, and from corporal and Anstead on some boards Mi^en on until the ship duly arrived laid over boxes, and I on a bench on things ran smootlily; there were no which we kept tlie carpentry tools. morn near-tragedios. The .\rciie The following day broke calm and brought lumber, more coal, and ample clear, with Uie brilliant winter sun-- S'upplles. and when she sailed again still low in the sky after its return on for civilization a new post had been the 13th ot Februai-y- shining on the built to house the two men who during banks of white snow, iron-hard after , 1-^4-25 composed "The Top-ofihe- •>- HUl Purple. Consider, first, the difference pro- the pressure ot yesterday's wind. j World Patrol." It was strange to look out to where j tlie house had been. 0:'ly a sheM of the old snow wall remaineu; of the house itself not a particle was left. Only the bl and the tw remained to remind us of what had voilet, and deep ultramarine blue. been our home for eighteen long weary which we owe to mountains. In an of Derham's attentions. On tfee first day of the trial the King's Counsel outlined his case and called four wit- nesses. On the second he called three witnesses and wound up his argu- ment. That same afternoon the de- fence put the accu.sed on the stand, ending its case before the court ad- journed at tea time. The judge finish- ed charging the jury by the following noon, and on the afternoon of this third day the prisoner was acquitted. In the New Jersey trial a prosecu- tor who paid as much attention to the neiVspapers as to the Court took six- teen days to present his case, after which the defence took eleven more days. More than a hundred witnesses were called, and when their testimony was given there followed five days of finishing touches before the accused were acquitted. It took the Amer- ican court, in a commonwealth cele- brated among our states for its ' speedy administration of justice, ackened ruins of the stoves duced in the whole tone of landscape Zv it'^lrlZh Zlt'^t. do ex.ctlv isted iron of the bedsteads ci^lor by the introductions of purple, 1?°^ ^'"^ Bntisli court to do eNactly . J _j . . -r ...u„. u„,. ,.,^ii„f -.wi A^r. „lf^»,„,.i„r M,,^ the same thing. Perhaps if our courts ordinary lowland landscape we have â€" ♦> â€" did their work with the dispatch com- mon in England we would have le.ss occasion to talk about the crime wave. mouths. Here and there in the snow wc saw articles which we had thrown from the window in desiperatlon the day before. -.> , -• . â€" ^ , ^ â-  ^- • ,. .,. ^ found other things as far as philosopher. "In fact I meet them, as "-ont for speedy just.ce just that "I never have any trouble in meet- The fact that we have more cases ing expenses," says the small-town <han England has makes the argu- I Later we „ , ^ ., two miles out on the s.8<i.-lee, where >ou might say, at every turn. time within twenty-four hours. Next day we fitted up the* blubber- shed as best we could to serve a« our home until the ship came In .\ug\is.t jf she did. We plugged the many hoi. s In the filmsy sti-ucture Uipough which ; the wind howled, and built a huge ] snow wall about the entire building. | Luckl'ly we had a siMire cook-stove. It had bean sent up for another post, but i left at Craig Harbor by accident. We j dug It up from beneath a ten-foot siiow- bank and fixed it lu the ahed, but we could not find the accompanying box , of fittings, and lack of these nearly | proved our undoing for the second time within iweiityfour hours. From the wreck of the kitchen, lying amid the debris of the burned house, I we took the bent and cracked Etove- ' fittings and fixed them on the new i stove. In stite of the cracks they seein- i ed to fit fairly well, and for the whole ^ of that day they functioned perfectly. | That night before going to bed we ' banked the fire with coa.1 and turned In. I retired to my bed on the bench; the other two mea occupied aa lu>r i much stronger. I Nipped in the Bud. I One of the tragedies of spring i» the frequency with which promise is nipped in the bud. A few days of sunshine come together, and we cast our "clouts" and delude ourselves into thinking that summer has arrived. Then the east wind i"eturns, our hopes are nipped in the bud, and we are lucky if we do not spend a few days under the sheets ana under the doctor. i The funny thing is that Nature makes the same mistake. Birds are often deluded by false signs of sum- mer. In the orchard the apple trees deck themselves in blotsom as for a bridal ; then comes a frost, and tho : promise of fruit is nipped in the bud ; and the orchard grass is strewn thick r with pink petals. ' And what Nature docs in the "gar- den and orchard we too often do to our children. We nip them in the bud. The fiost of our sternness and lack of understanding and kindly svTTipathy blights their childish en- thu.siasms and kills their premature hopes and a.spirations. Children are often made very mis- erable in this way, and often perman- ent harm is done. The nature that was blossoming so sweetly is sup- pressed and brought to nothing. I am convinced we have much room for improvement in this respect, not only in regard to little children, but to our big boys and girls, and even to our young men and women. Dis- trust and criticism are frosty things. They are the east winds of life; very destructive. There is evidence that every ajje has been hard on its rising genera- tion. It is time this age tried a .lif- ferent course. Occasionally we get a propitious spri- g, wlien hardly any- thing is nipped in the bud, and it pro- duces a bumper year for crops. Why, then, be scornful and biting with youth, losing no opportunity of rail- ing at them, beiittling them, calling them names? It is a bad habit, with perh.ins a little of jealousy and envy in it. In any case, it is time it stopped. Older people have had their .springtime, and have forgotten the great exhilara- tions that stirred their li'ood. ti'-ed their imagination, and rnised 'heir hopps and expectalions. Consequently they lecture the youngsters. ^aVv the msternly to tnsk, and-tell them tnra diddle? about what they did, and diiin't, when they were their age: how lliey reverenced their parents and obeyed their slightest wish; how they respected their super- iors; how they worked like g'tUey slaves and seldom took a holiday; how they rose with the lark and came Home 'early! It's very funny. I would not like to assert that the I young.stors, take them sternly to task, j think they are. They're not! But for heaven's sake let them think so, â-  for a boy may often become what he thinks he can become. Do not nip I their young shoots of bombast and brag in the bud. They do no harm, and may hear good, sound fruit. Thoy need m<>'(. encouragement: not suppression and "sitting on." No flower ever bloomed the better for being nipped in the bud. It wilted and died; proved a failure and dis- appointment. Buds flourish best ia, the sunshine and warmth. A.ruien {.trt. jtat ae hungry a<s anybody elsa, whic* explains this siplemdld- ly equipped kitchtn of t'he Unil.'d States dirigible Los .\ngeles, preeWed over by Eddiie Cvok, who '» saM lu b« tuiut,u» iur his U'i«h e!«>w. Mount Armour situated on the In- j ternational Boundary between Brit- ish Columbia and .\laska has an ele- vation of 8.776 feet. It is named i after Hon. Mr. Justice John D. Ar- ' mour. Chief Justice of the High I Court of Ontario, who was one of th» ' original Canadian memiert ot th« Alaska Bvundary Tribunal tn .9«