Three months passed away, but the snow still lay deep and white and
undiminished around York Fort. Winter--cold, silent, unyielding
winter--still drew its white mantle closely round the lonely dwelling
of the fur-traders of the Far North.
Icicles hung, as they had done for months before, from the eaves of
every house, from the tall black scaffold on which the great bell
hung, and from the still taller erection that had been put up as an
outlook for "_the ship_" in summer. At the present time it commanded
a bleak view of the frozen sea. Snow covered every housetop, and hung
in ponderous masses from their edges, as if it were about to fall;
but it never fell--it hung there in the same position day after day,
unmelted, unchanged. Snow covered the whole land, and the frozen
river, the swamps, the sea-beach, and the sea itself, as far as the
eye could reach, seemed like a pure white carpet. Snow lined the
upper edge of every paling, filled up the key-hole of every door,
embanked about half of every window, stuck in little knobs on the top
of every picket, and clung in masses on every drooping branch of the
pine trees in the forest. Frost--sharp, biting frost--solidified,
surrounded, and pervaded everything. Mercury was congealed by it;
vapour was condensed by it; iron was cooled by it until it could
scarcely be touched without (as the men expressed it) "burning" the
fingers. The water-jugs in Bachelors' Hall and the water-buckets were
frozen by it, nearly to the bottom; though there was a good stove
there, and the Hall was not _usually_ a cold place by any means.
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