ADVENTURE BELOW ZERO

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 66, 19 March 1938, Page 8 (Supplement)

ADVENTURE BELOW ZERO

The "Children's Newspaper" telle us this story of Elizabeth, who mushed 25 miles through the Canadian snow to eave the limbs, and perhaps the life, of a disabled man. While her father wa« out near Naniakan Lake, his neighbour Lockhart crawled to the door of his little • log house. His snowshoe had caught in some brush and he had sprained his ankle so badly that he could not stand. Two nights he had spent in the open, building lires to keep warm in the bitter cold, and crawling little by little to the home of his friend. His feet were frost-bitten, his limbs frozen to the knee. He knew, and Elizabeth knew, that he might loose them, and there was no medical aid nearer than Crane Lake, 25 miles west. So what did this resolute girl do? She mai'e her patient as comfortable as possible, got out her team of five police dogs, and hitched them to her toboggan. There was no possibility of taking the disabled man on it, or even of travelling on it herself through the soft snow. The best she could do was to run behind it on her snowshoes, trusting to her dogs to help her along. That was how she ran the 25 miles in a day, mushing the whole distance over unbroken trails, piled in some places with heavy snowdrifts up to her waist. She reached Crane Post early the same evening, and from there they telephoned to the hospital at International Falls. A motor car was sent from there to the Berber's house at Xamakan Lake, and brought Lorkhart back to hnppital in time, but only just in time to save hk legs and hands.