INSECT PESTS 243 



on the label — put up, with the rest of our medicine, by 

 Dr. Alexander Lambert ; he had tested it in the north 

 woods and found it excellent. I had never before been 

 forced to use such an ointment, and had been reluctant 

 to take it with me ; but now I was glad enough to have 

 it, and we all of us found it exceedingly useful. I would 

 never again go into mosquito gr sand-fly country with- 

 out it. The effect of an application wears off after half 

 an hour or so, and under many conditions, as when one 

 is perspiring freely, it is of no use ; but there are times 

 when minute mosquitoes and gnats get through head- 

 nets and under mosquito-bars, and when the ointment 

 occasionally renewed may permit one to get sleep or rest 

 which would otherwise be impossible of attainment. 

 The termites got into our tent on the sand-flat, ate holes 

 in Cherrie's mosquito-net and poncho, and were starting 

 to work at our duffel-bags, when we discovered them. 



Packing the loads across was simple. Dragging the 

 heavy dugouts was labour. The biggest of the two 

 water-logged ones was the heaviest. Lyra and Kermit 

 did the job. All the men were employed at it except 

 the cook and one man who was down with fever. A 

 road was chopped through the forest, and a couple of 

 hundred stout six-foot poles, or small logs, were cut as 

 rollers and placed about two yards apart. With block 

 and tackle the seven dugouts were hoisted out of the 

 river, up the steep banks, and up the rise of ground until 

 the level was reached. Then the men harnessed them- 

 selves two by two on the drag-rope, while one of their 

 number pried behind with a lever, and the canoe, bump- 

 ing and sliding, was twitched through the woods. Over 

 the sandstone flats there were some ugly ledges, but on 

 the whole the course was down-hill and relatively easy. 

 Looking at the way the work was done, at the good- 



