| Summary: | Wainwright Setting On Top Of World, Also Of A Glacier. Wainwright Setting on Top Of World, Also of a Glacier By Associated Press NOME, Alaska, Thursday, Nov. 5. —Winter held Wainwright, lonely settlement on the Arctic shoreline, in its icy grip today, but a letter, delivered by one of the last boats out. indicates living on top of a glacier has its advantages. Ernest P. Stowell, government school teacher at the trading post and reindeer village, wrote that each lunch time the few Wainwright whites gather about their six radio receiving sets and hear the latest United States news broadcast—from London. But Wainwright residents are accustomed to such a round-about way of living—their three winter mail deliveries come southwest by dog team from Barrow, most northerly postoffice in America, and up the coast from Kotzebue, the dog drivers meeting in the Arctic wilderness 150 miles southwest of Wainwright, exchanging mail and returning home. "There are 17,000 reindeer at this station," Stowell wrote, "and their corral walls are built of ice, several feet high and a foot thick. Great slabs, seven feet long and three feet wide are stood on end, touching one another. "Our 'ice house' is carved right out of the glacier. This whole peninsula is on a great glacier, and you have only to dig down two feet and the ice commences —keeping reindeer meat, seals, whales, walruses, birds, ducks, geese, ptarmigan, brant and such fruits and vegetables as you want, an indefinite period. 'There are three big coal mines, thirteen and eighteen miles from the village. Any native can have coal for getting it, so all have big coal piles at home. One of the seams extends away out under water in the lagoon and when the sea is rough it pilesU^the coal up, ready, on the beach." But besides having the sea mine the coal for them, Wainwright residents melt the glacier ice to warm their homes—"we have an abundance of hot water at all times," the schoolmaster wrote, "and a barrelfull of hot water will keep a house warm when temperatures go down to 40 degrees below zero. "Our gasoline washing machines take the drudgery out of washing. We have the only rubber bath tub in the village. We have six fine reindeer stored away for meat. They are so cheap . we paid $5 in barter for each one, delivered. Other goods are terribly high up here. "Virginia and Junior, our children, have parkas, mukluks and skin pants for outdoor wear. They play outside with sleds and dogs a bit. I have a new spotted seal parka and am having a fawn skin parka made. "There are six radios in the village and we have a great range of stations to listen in on. In the forenoon, we get Europe and-Asia. We listen to the happenings in the United States from London, while eating lunch at noon (3 p. m., P. S. T.)."
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