SNOW-BLINDED ON THE SUMMIT 15 



inches above my head. Sorry to have disturbed 

 them I went on down the slope. 



At last I felt the morning sun in my face. With 

 increased light my eyes became extremely painful. 

 For a time I relaxed upon the snow, finding it 

 difficult to believe that I had been travelling all 

 night in complete darkness. While lying here 

 I caught the scent of smoke. There was no mis- 

 taking it. It was the smoke of burning aspen, 

 a wood much burned in the cook-stoves of moun- 

 tain people. Eagerly I rose to find it. I shouted 

 again and again but there was no response. Under 

 favourable conditions, keen nostrils may detect 

 aspen-wood smoke for a distance of two or three 

 miles. 



The compensation of this accident was an in- 

 tense stimulus to my imagination — perhaps our 

 most useful intellectual faculty. My eyes, always 

 keen and swift, had ever supplied me with almost 

 an excess of information. But with them suddenly 

 closed my imagination became the guiding faculty. 

 I did creative thinking. With pleasure I restored the 

 views and scenes of the morning before. Any one 

 seeking to develop the imagination would find a 

 little excursion afield, with eyes voluntarily blind- 

 folded, a most telling experience. 



Down the mountainside I went, hour after hour. 

 My ears caught the chirp of birds and the fall of 

 icicles which ordinarily I would hardly have heard. 

 My nose was constantly and keenly analyzing the 



