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As a result my tongue was now so extremely sensitive that pieces of soda biscuit tasted like broken glass. Corporal Gamarra, who had been unwilling to keep his snow-glasses always in place and thought to relieve his eyes by frequently dispensing with them, now suffered from partial snow-blindness. The rest of us were spared any inflammation of the eyes.
But on the third day Clark had an attack of snow-blindness, and Mew took his place. Pretty soon our sufferings commenced, and they were bitter enough. The sun, though constantly visible day and night, gave no heat. Sometimes our frail bamboo-cane kayaks, lying across the sledges, would crash perilously against an ice-ridge and they were our one hope of reaching land.
Lieutenant Schwatka and his companion, the present writer, are both near-sighted, and during the two seasons that they were exposed to the disease neither were at any time affected by snow-blindness; while the other members of the party, and especially the natives, who have most powerful visual organs, were almost constantly martyrs to the disease whenever exposed to its attacks.
We had gone two or three miles farther, and were near a wood, when Pat cried out, "For the life of me it's more than I can do to see the way," and Martin confessed that he also had almost lost his sight. I told Alick what they said. "It is snow-blindness," he answered "a serious matter. We must camp without delay. Do you go on, David, ahead of Pat, and show the way."
With certain winds we were nearly choked with a black, oily smoke that hurt our eyes and brought on much the same symptoms as accompany snow-blindness. "We take it in turns to be cook and messman, working in pairs: Abbott and I, Levick and Browning, Priestley and Dickason, and thus each has one day on in three.
Indeed, the scene was too dazzling, and as there was a tendency in it to produce snow-blindness, we soon returned to the friendly shelter of the woods. "Tracks!" exclaimed Lumley, in a low voice, pointing to the ground, where footmarks were clearly visible, "and fresh," he added, turning up the snow under the track with the butt of his gun.
Another important thing there must be a rope to tie the whole party together with, so that if one falls from a mountain or down a bottomless chasm in a glacier, the others may brace back on the rope and save him. One must have a silk veil, to protect his face from snow, sleet, hail and gale, and colored goggles to protect his eyes from that dangerous enemy, snow-blindness.
A decoction of its resinous buds has been sometimes used by the Indians with success in cases of snow-blindness, but its application to the inflamed eye produces much pain. Of pines the white spruce is the most common here: the red and black spruce, the balsam of Gilead fir, and Banksian pine also occur frequently. The larch is found only in swampy spots and is stunted and unhealthy.
But the amber glasses, with their yellow celluloid side-pieces, were not a mere palliative, as all other glasses had been in our experience, but a complete preventive of snow-blindness. No one of us had the slightest trouble with the eyes, and the eye-washes were never used.
La Salle himself was sitting in darkness while the spring sun struck a million sparkles from a world yet locked in winter. The wind chilled his back, and he spread his hands to the camp blaze. In the torment of snow-blindness he wondered whether Tonty was treading these white wastes, seeking him, or lying dead of Indian wounds under the snow crust.
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