426 Mosquitoes as Torments. [Juiy, iseo. 



uncomfortable for Arctic denizens A storai on the 19th was accom- 

 panied by sharp hghtning. 



The plains were now purple with the wild saxifrage (Saxifraga 

 oppositifolia) ; its beautiful flowers followed by those of other floral 

 tribes, clothed the earth with carpets of gold, crimson, blue, white, 

 pink, and straw color. The Andromeda tetragona, so often named as 

 the shrub-fuel, itself bore pretty flowers. Hall's collection of wild 

 flowers embraced a dozen varieties. 



Mosquitoes first appeared on the 7th of July, and afterwards on 

 his trips to Talloon they were exceedingly troublesome. 

 ' He records an experience of one walk : 



The sun was about 5 degrees higli. Not a breath of air stirring, the sun 

 shining hot, and the mosquitoes desperately intent on getting all the blood of the 

 only white man of the country. I kept up a constant battling with my seal-skin 

 mittens directly before my face, now and then letting them slap first on one and 

 then on the other of my hands, which operations crushed many a foe. It seemed 

 to me at times as if I never would get back. Minutes were like hours, and the 

 distance of about two miles seemed more like half a score. At length I got back 

 to my home, both temperature and temper high. I made quick work in throwing 

 open the canvas roof of our stores, and, getting to our medicine-chest, snatched 

 a half-pint bottle of mosquito-proof oil, and with a little of this besmeared every 

 exposable part of my person. How glorious and sudden was the change. A 

 thousand devils, each armed with lancet and blood-pump, courageously battling 

 my very face, departed at once in supreme disgust at the confounded stink the 

 coal-oil had diffused about me. 



The questions of the way of return to America remained an unceas- 

 ing anxiety. In case no vessel should come into the bay, it was quite 

 uncertain whether he could get any of the Innuits to accompany him 

 on a boat voyage down the Welcome from which to proceed to York 

 Factory on Hudson's Bay, or even to seek in the Welcome for a ship 

 wliicli might be l)ouiid for the United States. "Other matters also, 



