yes
became so affected by the glare, that it was impossible to travel by
sunlight. The black eyes of the Indians seemed very susceptible to this
disease, which they call "snow blindness." It is very painful, as I
know by sad experience. The sensation is like that of having red-hot
sand thrown on the eyeballs. Often my faithful dog-drivers used to
suffer so from it that, stoical as they naturally are, I have known them
to groan and almost cry out like children in the camp.

Once, in travelling near Oxford Lake, we came across a couple of Indians
who were stone-blind from this disease. Fortunately they had been able
to reach the woods and make a camp and get some food ready ere total
blindness came upon them. We went out of our course to guide them to
their friends.

To guard against the attack of this disease, which seldom occurs except
in the months of March and April, when the increasing brightness of the
sun, in those lengthening days, makes its rays so powerful, we often
travelled only during the night-time, and rested in the sheltered camps
during the hours of sunshine. On some of our long trips we have
travelled eight nights continuously in this way. We generally left our
camp about sundown. At midnight we groped about as well as we could,
aided by the light of the stars or the brilliant auroras, and found some
dry wood and birch bark, with which we made a fire and cooked a midnight
dinner. Then on we went until the morning light came. Then a regular
camp was prepared, and breakfast cooked and eaten, and the dogs were
fed, instead of at night. Prayers said, and ourselves wrapped up in our
blankets and robes, we slept until the hours of brilliant sunshine were
over, when on we went.

It always seemed to me that the work of the guides would be much more
difficult at night than during the daytime. They, however, did not
think so. With unerring accuracy they pushed on. It made no matter to
them whether the stars shone out in all the beauty and brilliancy of the
Arctic sky, or whether clouds arose and obscured them all. On the guide
pushed through tangled underwood or dense gloomy forest, where there
were not to be seen, for days, or rather nights, together, any other
tracks than those made by the wild beasts of the forest.

Sometimes the wondrous auroras blazed out, flashing and scintillating
with a splendour indescribable. At times the whole heavens seemed aglow
with their fickle, inconstant beaut