Paints Ice to Open Channel. Lake Labarge, locale of the strange goings on in Robert W. Service's poem, "The Cremation of Sam McGee," was the scene of an unusual operation against low temperature recently when a steamboat captain painted a black streak across the ice to hasten its melting and thus permit an early voyage from White Horse to Dawson, Alaska. Remembering from his school hook physics that black absorbs the sun's rays and retains heat, H. Wheeler, owner and captain of the steamboat Cascn, and his crew smeared a strip of refuse ail and lamp black forty feet wide across the glittering ice of Labarge. Areport of the venture received here said the application caused the ice to melt sooner than the glistening expanse that had not been painted. The Cascn was said to have sailed through the 29-mile canal etched in the ice by the oil and lamp black and moved toward Dawsm-Philadelphia Bulletin
