The wind howled over the bleak and wintry landscape, and seemed to penetrate to the marrow of their bones.

They waded on through the snow, which at every step was more than knee deep.
After tolling in this way all day, they had the mortification to find that they were but four miles distant from the encampment of the preceding night, such was the meandering of the river among these dismal hills.

Pinched with famine, exhausted with fatigue, with evening approaching, and a wintry wild still lengthening as they advanced, they began to look forward with sad forebodings to the night's exposure upon this frightful waste.

Fortunately they succeeded in reaching a cluster of pines about sunset.

Their axes were immediately at work; they cut down trees, piled them in great heaps, and soon had huge fires "to cheer their cold and hungry hearts." About three o'clock in the morning it again began to snow, and at daybreak they found themselves, as it were, in a cloud, scarcely being able to distinguish objects at the distance of a hundred yards.