the glass, bought in New York as a preventive of the deposit of
moisture, proved entirely useless. In this respect the Esquimau snow
goggle, which is simply a piece of wood hollowed out into a cup and
illuminated by narrow slits, has advantage over any shape or kind of
glass protection. A French metal device of the same order that is
advertised in the dealer's catalogues was found to fail, perhaps owing
to a wrong optical arrangement of the slits. It caused an eye-strain
that brought on headache. But if that principle could be scientifically
worked out and such a device perfected, it would be a boon to the
traveller over sun-lit snow, for it would do away with glass altogether,
with its two chief objections--its fragility and its opacity when
covered with vapour.

[Sidenote: SNOW-BLINDNESS]

The indispensability of some eye protection when travelling in the late
winter, and the serious consequences that follow its neglect, were once
again demonstrated at Mouse Point. The road-house was crowded with
"busted" stampeders coming out of the Nowikaket country. There had been
a report of a rich "strike" on a creek of the Nowitna, late the previous
fall, and a number of men from other camps--some from as far as
Nome--had gone in there with "outfits" for the winter. The stampede had
been a failure; no gold was found; there was much indignant assertion
that no gold ever _had_ been found and that the reported "strike" was a
"fake," though to what end or profit such a "fake" stampede should be
caused, unless by some neighbouring trader, it is hard to understand;
and here were the stampeders streaming out again, a ragged, unkempt,
sorry-looking crowd in every variety of worn-out arctic toggery, many
of them suffering from acute snow-blindness. It is surprising that even
old-timers will go out in the hills for the whole winter without
providing themselves with protection against the glare of the sun which
they know will inevitably assail their eyes before the spring, yet so it
is; and this lack of forethought is not confined to the matter of snow
glasses: the first half dozen men we received in Saint Matthew's
Hospital at Fairbanks suffering from severely frozen feet were all
old-timers grown careless.

Father Ragarou, another Jesuit priest of another type, reached the
road-house from the opposite direction about the same time we did, and I
was interested in watching his treatment of the inflamed eyes. Upon a
disk of lead he fold