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Various

"The Illustrated London Reading Book"


[Illustration: WINTER DRESS OF BRITISH TROOPS IN CANADA.]
Notwithstanding, however, this intensity of cold, the powerful
circulation of the blood of large quadrupeds keeps the red fluid, like
the movement of the waters in the great lakes, from freezing; but the
human frame not being gifted with this power, many people lose their
limbs, and occasionally their lives, from cold. I one day inquired of a
fine, ruddy, honest-looking man, who called upon me, and whose toes and
instep of each foot had been truncated, how the accident happened? He
told me that the first winter he came from England he lost his way in
the forest, and that after walking for some hours, feeling pain in his
feet, he took off his boots, and from the flesh immediately swelling, he
was unable to put them on again. His stockings, which were very old
ones, soon wore into holes; and as rising on his insteps he was
hurriedly proceeding he knew not where, he saw with alarm, but without
feeling the slightest pain, first one toe and then another break off, as
if they had been pieces of brittle stick, and in this mutilated state he
continued to advance till he reached a path which led him to an
inhabited log house, where he remained suffering great pain till his
cure was effected.


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