IN LOVE WITH PICTURE

Waikato Times, Volume 111, Issue 18642, 21 May 1932, Page 12 (Supplement)

IN LOVE WITH PICTURE

Cardboard Girl Brings Tragedy to Lonely

Inhabitants of Frozen North.

What life In the frozen regions of the North is actually like few people have any conception. Explorers return with their stories of hardship and suffering, but It has been left to a w-hlte man, who has lived in the Arctic regions with the Eskimos and Polar settlers for the greater part of his life, to describe vividly everyday existence. And he reveals an extraordinary state of affairs. The people are hard and stern, like the climate and the country. Justice is primitive and awful. Orphaned children are taken out into the snow, their stomachs are split open, and they are left to die. The more fortunate children with parents start work at the age of two. Offenders against the law get short shrift. There are no prisons, and death is the only punishment that can be imposed. The three variations of this sentence are shooting, hanging and burning alive. Hanging, however, is considered disgraceful, and is seldom carried out. The condemned man is usually allowed to choose some form of suicide. He can shoot himself, poison himself, or slab himself with -a poisoned knife. Burning is the Invariable penalty for selling liquor to Eskimos. The viotim is tied to his sledge, several gallons of benzine are poured over him and the pyre is set alight. In a few r moments the whole thing is over. Trials on the Joe. The trial and execution take place on the ice at the spot where the offender is caught, and, naturally, with a temperature many degrees below zero justice Is not unduly protracted. These stories are contained in “Thirty Years in the Golden North.” The author, Jan Welzl, is a workman who travelled on foot right across Siberia to the Arctic Ocean, a journey which look him over two years. He decided to settle in the Arctic Islands among the Eskimos and the few white settlers who had wandered into that desolate area. After tremendous hardships he raised soine capital by sailing on whaling ships in the summer months, and with this he opened a slore. He traded with the natives for their furs and gold. His business developed and prospered until lie was supplying the whole of the Arctic regions with

provisions, timber, and coal . Sometimes, travelling by sledge, he went as far as from Europe to America in reaching his outlying customers. After several years of prosperous trading he was able to buy a 3000ton steamer, and in the end was elected chief of the whole district —a sort of King of the Polar Regions. In his narrative Welzl gives a revealing picture of the loneliness of the North. , He tells of men who' fell in love with the girl depicted on a calendar. Some of them, driven crazy by solitude, heard her calling, ran, out into the storm after her, and perished somewhere on the ice. Others used to write love letters to her, while a few settlers wrote letters to all sorts of imaginary women all over the world. The Case of Pitt’s Nose. Frostbite is the commonest ailment in the North. The Eskimo doctors treat It by cutting away the affected parts. When a face is frostbitten so that large parts of it are destroyed the doctor grafts on it the skin from, a child’s back.

When the hand or the fingers are frastbitten the patient has to bang the limb against the edge of the table and the frostbitten parts drop off. Welzl mentions a Swede who called on him one day during a terrible frost and complained that his hand was itching. “I said to him: ‘Knock your hand against the table.’

“The Swede knocked his hand against the edge of the table, and his lingers flew off in all directions.’ There is also the story of “Laplander” Pitt, who went out in a frost of 79 degrees below zero. Ilis nose became frostbitten, and when he rubbed it it came away in his hand. An Eskimo doctor was hastily summoned and lie performed an immediate operation—with bone instruments. Skin and flesh from the back of u child were grafted on to Pitt’s face, and kept in position with a bone mould. In three weeks Pitt was complete with nose again.

But Pitt was not satisfied with his new facial adornment, chiefly because, instead of having two nostrils as formerly, he had one large one, and also because the nose was Eskimo in colour. He solved his difllcully by shooting himself.