ed a little piece of cotton cloth in the shape of a
tent, and, setting fire to it, allowed it to burn out completely. Then
with a wet camel's-hair brush he gathered up the slight yellow residuum
of the combustion and painted it over the eyes, holding the lids open
with thumb and finger and drawing the brush through and through. An
incredulous spectator, noticing the sacred monogram neatly stamped upon
the disk of lead, made some sneering remark to me about "Romish
superstition," but remembering the Jesuit's bark, and recalling that I
had in my writing-case at that moment a letter I had brought all the way
from the Koyukuk addressed to this very priest, begging for a further
supply of a pile ointment that had proved efficacious, I held my peace.
Whether it be an oxide or a carbonate, or some salt that is formed by
the combustion, I am not chemist enough to know, but I saw man after man
relieved by this application. Even the scoffer was convinced there was
merit in the treatment, though stoutly protesting that "them letters"
had nothing to do with it; which nobody took the trouble to argue with
him. My own custom--we are all of us doctors of a sort in this
country--is to instil a few drops of a five-per-cent solution of
cocaine, which gives immediate temporary relief, and then apply frequent
washes of boric acid, bandaging up the eyes completely in bad cases by
cloths kept wet with the solution. But I do not know that it brings
better result than the lead treatment. Certainly it is a matter in which
an ounce of any sort of prevention is better than a pound of any sort of
cure. The affection is a serious one, being nothing more or less than
acute ophthalmia; the pain is very severe, and repeated attacks are said
to bring permanent weakness of the eyes. Smoked glasses or goggles,[A]
veils of green or blue or black, even a crescent eye-shade cut out of a
piece of birch-bark or cardboard and blackened on its under-side with
charcoal, will prevent the hours and sometimes days of torture which
this distemper entails.

[Sidenote: HORSES AND MULES]

For a few miles we had the trail of the stampeders, but when that
crossed the river we put on our snow-shoes and settled to the steady
grind once more. A day's mush brought us to "The Birches," and another
to Gold Mountain. Between the two places there was a portage, and the
trail thereon, protected by the timber, was good. We longed for the time
when all trails in Alaska shall be ta