C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

Check to our Progress 105our sleeping bags and net walls generously, we turned to sleep, waking to reachfor the tin of bicarbonate of soda whenever an intrusive mosquito bit us on theface, or on the bony part of the wrist. Gwen, being fair-haired, suffered morethan I did from the little pests, although her skin had been toughened by exposureto all weathers and should not have been tempting to any insect. Thoughsallow-skinned and dark, I was on the whole less troubled by our enemies.Fortunately, the mosquito bites of the north country do not carry malaria.We slept, on and off, for I2 hours, then Gwen crawled out of the tent toreconnoitre. There was no sign of life from the two guides. The water had risenand she put in another twig. A couple of hours later I went out and found that thewater had fallen a little.While we were breakfasting, late, the sky looked thundery, the Indians lookedsleepy and were silent; there was no denying that our prospects were gloomy. Weremembered all too vividly the story of the woman who had ventured alone to goup the Rat River with Indian guides and how they had taken her back when theyhad made less than half the journey, because she persisted in giving them ordersto do this and that. Mindful of her fate, we adopted towards Lazarus a deferentialmanner that was almost cringing. I do not think that Gwen had ever cringed toanyone before.Mter that breakfast of pork, bannock and pilot bread, we went back to oursleeping bags and I read aloud extracts from Macbeth while Gwen mended ourmosquito veils. Later, after another heavy meal, it was obvious that there hadbeen little change in the water level, and as there was no hope of moving on we setoff up the river bank to hunt for flowers.At the end of about a mile of level forest we came to a hill and clawed our wayup it, through a perfect hell of mosquitoes, until we came to a paradise offlowers. There was Linnaea borealis and the 0-9coccus underfoot, in masses. Therewas pink Menziesia, a handsome yellow-flowered dock, a very showy pink Pedicularisabout two feet high, mauve Pinguicula, larkspur, lupin, Polemonim and, on one highridge, a whole sheet of yellow Arnica. All about us were many beautiful varieties ofmoss. We stood on that hilltop among scrubby willows that had soaked us to theknees, but we did not stay there for more than a few minutes. There were stormclouds overhead and a fme view of mountains, but we could not gaze at them, forthe mosquitoes pursued us relentlessly. Even if they did not get inside our nets,the buzzing of the mosquitoes drove us into perpetual movement and we nevercould bear to stand still in a cloud of them. We had the incurable delusion that