The most
baffling part of the trouble having been thus got over, we soon joined
A., blue already, and shivering on the snow. The sun now reached very
nearly to the bottom of the pit, and I went up once more for
thermometers and other things, leaving a measure with my sisters, and
begging them to amuse themselves by taking the dimensions of the snow:
on my return, however, to the top of the ladder, I found them
combining over a little bottle, and they informed me plaintively that
they had been taking medicinal brandy and snow instead of
measurements,--a very necessary precaution, for anyone to whom brandy
is not a greater nuisance than utter cold. We found the dimensions of
the bottom of the pit, i.e. of the field of snow on which we stood, to
be 31-1/2 feet by 21; but we were unable to form any idea of the depth
of the snow, beyond the fact that 'up to the ancle' was its prevailing
condition. The boy told us, when we rejoined him, that when he and
others had attempted to get ice for the landlord, when it was ordered
for him in a serious illness the winter before, they had found the pit
filled to the top with snow.
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