Chicago.

Perhaps a prolonged sojourn in such a climate is one reason for
the stolid character of the Indians. Of course we cannot speak
with certainty, but we must, in our search for an explanation,
consider the conditions of life in the far north. Food is scanty
at all times, and starvation is a frequent visitor, especially in
winter when game is hard to get. The long periods of cold and
darkness are terribly enervating. The nervous white man goes
crazy if he stays too long in Alaska. Every spring the first
boats returning to civilization carry an unduly large proportion
of men who have lost their minds because they have endured too
many dark, cold winters. His companions say of such a man, "The
North has got him." Almost every Alaskan recognizes the danger.
As one man said to a friend, "It is time I got out of here."

"Why?" said the friend, "you seem all right. What's the matter?"

"Well," said the other, "you see I begin to like the smell of
skunk cabbage, and, when a man gets that way, it's time he went
somewhere else."

The skunk cabbage, by the way, grows in Alaska in great thickets
ten feet high. The man was perfectly serious, for he meant that
his mind was beginning to act in ways that were not normal.
Nowhere is the strain of life in the far north better described
than in the poems of Robert W. Service.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and