156 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. CHAP, x 



bring us to the lake ; it is growing dark, and although 

 I'm not night-blind now, thank God, yet I always Eke to 

 be in camp before it grows dark.' 



After supper Laronde came to my tent and asked me if 

 I was ready to hear him. Eeceiving a ready assent, he 

 threw some birch-bark and dry wood on the fire to make 

 a bright blaze, lit his pipe, and arranging a few spruce 

 branches on the moss near the door of the tent, he 

 squatted down and began his narrative. 



' THE NIGHT-BLIND VOYAGEURS. 



' Two years ago I was lumbering on the Matawan, which 

 flows into the Ottawa about a mile above Bytown. The 

 place they now call the City of Ottawa, which the Queen 

 has decided shah 1 be the capital of Canada. 



' Night-blind is a disease of the eyes not uncommon 

 amongst lumberers in the spring of the year, and even 

 after the snow has passed away, so that you must not 

 think it the same as the snow-blind. Men struck with 

 this malady see perfectly well during the day, but the 

 moment it becomes dusk they are totally insensible to 

 light of any kind. Two years ago I was lumbering on the 

 Matawan, and one of my comrades in the fall, and the 

 best of friends, was a man named Jerome. I had not 

 seen him for several weeks, and met him at the mouth of 

 a creek leading into the Matawan, as I was passing down 

 in a canoe, picking up the lodged sticks.* It was late in 

 the afternoon, and I was thinking of hauling the canoe 

 into the bush, and going back to the shanty, which might 

 be four miles away. 



* Pieces of timber squared by the lumberers. 



