Rensselaer Union, Volume 6, Number 15, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 January 1874 — A LAKE MYSTERY. [ARTICLE]

A LAKE MYSTERY.

Diamrry o( « Mn iittlag Upright In His Boat, Frozen to Death. A rew Sabbaths ago, two farmers of Malden, Canada, while riding to church with their families, noticed a ship’s yawl on the lake, heading towards the beach, and half a mile or so away. They could see plainly a man in the stern-sheets steering the boat with an oar, and though there were no vessels in sight from which the boat might have come, the morning was so bright and pleasant that they readily concluded that some one had left the beach for a morning sail, or to pick UJ> something he had seen in the distance. So they Jogged along churchward. On their return in the afternoon they found the yawl hard on the beach and the man ting stiff and motionless in the stern of the boat, grasping the steering oar as they had seen him in the morning. They Jumped from their wagons and then discovered that the

man was lifeless and frozen bard as a rock! He sat bolt upright on the seat, the oar protruding behind, and both hands clasping the handle. The boat contained about a foot of water, but otherwise did not show very rough usage. The man’s legs Were covered with ice as far up as the knocs aud the spray had dashed over hia back and shouldcra and frozen therq. *s.vZ:. . Nothing was found upon his person ta indl cate his identity, or to show how he had been cast adrift. It was not thought that he had put off from any vessel, but it was the belief of sailors in that region, that he had been driven from some island, or from some point down the shore. No one could say how long he had been afloat when death laid his icy fingers upon him, but the appearance of the corpse indicated that he had been dead at least three days. There were neither sail or mast to the boat, and but one oar, showing that the poor fellow had not intended a long;trip, and Riving good ground for the belief that he had been blown off the shore. He was frozen to the *eat so firmly that the ice had to be broken off with a stone before he could be released. For days the frozen man had been seated there, jig icy the aghen oar, speeded by kindly waves and favoring gales to Christ ian burial. The parallel instance of the finding of a vessel in the Polar Seas,’ with the crew sitting stark, silent and frozen, occurs to the mind as we read this simple story. In . that case the victims had a| least the ghastly satisfaction of freezing together, aud dying in company.. The Great Lakes have their mysterieq as well as the broad ocean.