SAND-FLIES AND MOSQUITOS. 117 



the stream below. The course of the river could 

 be traced N.N. E. about three miles, in which, 

 though there was evidently a strong current, 

 nothing appeared to break the glassiness of the 

 surface. It was bounded on each side by steep 

 shelving rocks, cheerful with vegetation, and 

 thinly clad with birch, firs, and willows. The 

 sun was too low, and the crew too wearied to 

 move on ; and having paddled to the other side, 

 for the convenience of a level spot on which to 

 pitch the tent, we gladly halted for the night. 



The laborious duty which had been thus satis- 

 factorily performed, was rendered doubly severe 

 by the combined attack of myriads of sand-flies 

 and mosquitos, which made our faces stream with 

 blood. There is certainly no form of wretched- 

 ness, among those to which the chequered life 

 of a voyageur is exposed, at once so great and 

 so humiliating, as the torture inflicted by these 

 puny blood-suckers. To avoid them is im- 

 possible : and as for defending himself, though 

 for a time he may go on crushing by thousands, 

 he cannot long maintain the unequal conflict ; so 

 that at last, subdued by pain and fatigue, he throws 

 himself in despair with his face to the earth, and, 

 half suffocated in his blanket, groans away a 

 few hours of sleepless rest. 



August 20. — The thermometer had fallen to 

 36*, and at four a. m., as soon as the sunken 



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