OCR Text |
Show VILL EE ISOLATED IN CANADIAN NORTH Lonely Year Scheduled for Scientific Party. Great Britain's share In next year's celebration of the jubilee of the Polar year will mean the isolation isola-tion of a small party of scientific observers for about a year at a station sta-tion in the north of Canada. During Dur-ing those winter months they will have no contact with the outside world. They are unlikely even to be In wireless communication. Their only transport will be dog sledges and their only chance of getting fresh food will depend on the success suc-cess with which they can use the snow and ice for the purpose of refrigeration. re-frigeration. The party will go to their lonely post on the most northerly arm of the Great Slave lake as soon as the ice breaks up at the end of June. They will reach the settlement of Fort Rae in time to make preparations prepara-tions and do some bartering with the Indians before the winter settles down again on this wild country and the Indians go off once more on the trail for the pelts by which they make a living. Some of them may drift back to the settlement again toward Christmas time and may have moose and caribou flesh to barter bar-ter for flour or implements. If that can be kept fresh by burying it in the snow the party's rations will be the more varied and nutritious, but if the cold storage is unsatisfactory they will have to content themselves with tinned goods. They will be living liv-ing in an Indian reserve and will therefore not be at liberty to shoot the only animals which might serve as food. This settlement is little farther north than the Shetlands, yet it is one of the coldest places in the world. In the winter it is not unusual un-usual to find from 100 to 110 degrees of frost. Fort Rae is a very primitive primi-tive settlement. It consists of a Hudson's Bay trader, one rival trader who is an Assyrian and another an-other who is a Russian, one Canadian Cana-dian mounted policeman, and a Roman Ro-man Catholic missionary. It is open to the rest of the world for about six weeks from the beginning of July, and even then it cannot be reached by any regular transport service. |