The cold has been intense during the last few days and breaking the
ice to wash is a usual morning performance. A temperature of 5° below
zero Fahrenheit does not facilitate starting a Ford ambulance that has
been standing out all night; in fact, almost every morning it takes
about fifteen minutes to start each car with the aid of hot water,
hot _potiers_, and other appliances that the inventive genius of our
various drivers supplies.
On either side of you a wilderness of snow. Take your eyes off the
road and you seem to be in the great forests of a new country. Look
back on the road and turn sharply to avoid the first of a convoy of
brand-new American tractors, or a maze of telephone wires with their
red-and-white labels which have been pulled from their supports by
the snow. The great rocks and banks resplendent with their coating of
ice, the trees, the snow, the occasional deer, fox, or rabbit contrast
strangely with the road--the narrow, winding, mountain road serving
for almost all forms of traffic, save the railroad, known to man.
Mules, mules, mules, always mules, with their drivers hanging on to the
beasts' tails.