BACK TO LIFE

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 December 1929, Page 4

BACK TO LIFE

agr'oss rugged ice floes. ' WINNIPEG, November 11. X thrilling story of a st ™ s | le £*°y to civilisation is revealed m the diary of Colonel McAlpine, leader of a par y of millionaire mining men, who, flying ovct Arctic wastes in Northern Canada, were forced down by o jt ( zard and were lost for eight we e^ s - 1 During that time, the leader of the party lost three .stone in weight. _ The amazing hardihood of an mo woman, one of a party to whom the white men owed their lives, furnishes ‘"oaem approaebtag Cambridge Bay settlement ** company with several Eskimos, to whom the party gave their money and gold watches as bribes for guidance. Th a diary reads :— “What a tough day! Hour after hour, trying to pick a course through a lar»e icefloe, wandering this way and that for the best going. The sleds were tugged' and pushed over ice hummocks Sit seemed to us uninitiated impossible to cross, and there was scrambling out of the way as we tumbled into holes between the.,ice cakes. “It was all nerve-racking and, oh, so tiring. Narrow leads of unsafe ice had to be crossed, but before going the Eskimos tested them with spears. “Mice the wife of the Eskimo with whom Colonel Mac Alpine and Bakjr were travelling, took her boy oft aftei he had been tossed from the sled several times, stripped him naked, and tied him on her back under her clothing. This did not stop her from continuing to do a man’s share of the work in urging on the dogs and helping the sled over the most diflicult spots. “Crossing weak ice, apparently fiozen only the night before, Alice broke through to her knees. Instead of trying to scramble out, and probably sinking deeper, she lay flat. An Eskimo rescued her, and on we went for threeouarters of a mile, when Alice stripped off her clothes and changed mto dryout in the open, with apparent great composure, even though the temperature was well below zero. “The experience might have been tragic to one of us whites, biit Alice re-dressed calmly, lit a cigarette with a niece of paper, and carried on as be-

“A.t 4 p.m we struck thin ice that the Eskimo could find no way to .cross. It was then a mater of parking for the night on the icefloe, hoping that in the morning the thin ice would become safe going. , . “Some of the party were fearful that the strong wind then blowing would carry the floe down the straits and perhaps break it up. The Eskimos assured us that the wind would die overnight. They were right, but we were so tired that our sleeping-bags could have ben carired away unknown to us. I had to be wakened between cups of tea. “Next day, after a terrible pull over hummocks, we saw the roofs of the little shacks at Cambridge, and within an hour radio messages that our families that we had returned to life.”