Snow blindness

“ This light is also very trying to the eyes, and one often hears of snow-blindness after such a day. The cause of this is not only that one strains one's eyes continually; it is also brought about by carelessness. One is very apt to push one's snow-goggles up on to one's forehead, especially if they are fitted with dark glasses. ”

“ Snow fell heavily, covering all tracks, and day after day a cold north-east wind, "whose bitter blast was torture," increased their sufferings as they ploughed their way on and on through such depths of snow as they had never seen before.
Many died of cold and hunger, many fell grievously sick, and others suffered from snow-blindness and frostbite. ”

“ By the careful use of snow-goggles during the summer, snow-blindness was practically prevented, and such cases as occurred yielded quickly when zinc and cocaine tablets were used and the eyes obtained rest. An undoubted factor in the causation of snow-blindness is the strain caused by the continual efforts at visual accommodation made necessary on dull days when the sun is obscured, and there is a complete absence of all light-and-shade contrast. ”

“ Snow-blindness is a malady which touches all mountain-travellers sooner or later, for it is found impossible in practice always to protect the eyes with the goggles which are shown overleaf. In critical situations almost every one removes them. The beginner should, however, note that at great altitudes it is not safe to leave the eyes unprotected even on rocks, when the sun is shining brightly; and upon snow or ice it is indispensable to shade them in some manner, unless you wish to be placed hors de combat on the next day. ”

“ That affection of the eyes known by the name of snow-blindness, is extremely frequent among these people. With them it scarcely ever goes beyond painful irritation, while among strangers inflammation is sometimes the consequence. ”

“ Snow-blindness occurs from prolonged exposure of the eyes to snow upon which the sun is shining. Some years ago, some seventy laborers, who were clearing away snow-drifts in the Caucasus, were seized, and thirty of them could not find their way home, so great was the photophobia, conjunctivitis, and lacrimation. ”

“ Snow-blindness is produced less frequently by sun-glare on the snow than by a diffuse dull light which casts no shadows and requires continuous strain to pick out hummocks and unevenness of the ice. It is said that people with less pigment, i.e. “blue-eyed” people, suffer more than those with darker, more heavily pigmented eyes, but this is not always the case. ”

“ During the winter the days are mostly bright, and the sun shines brilliantly on the snow, causing it to thaw. In the evenings it freezes again, and then the roads are like polished glass, and men, horses, and camels fall and are injured, the animals often breaking their legs and having to be destroyed. The sun, shining on the snow, also causes a good deal of snow blindness. But the most trying time in winter is when the skies are overcast, and a great wind rises which nothing will shut out of the house. ”

“ There is no reason anywhere for any more snow-blindness, and there is no use anywhere for any more blue or smoked glasses. The invention of the amber snow-glass is an even greater blessing to the traveller in the north than the invention of the thermos bottle. [Pg 38] No test could be more severe than that which we put these glasses to.
We were now at the farthest point at which it was possible to use the dogs, at our actual climbing base, and the time had come for Johnny and the dogs to go down to the base camp for good. ”

“ He sat during breakfast with bandaged eyes, and a droop of the shoulders, that seemed to say old age had come upon him in a single night. The day that followed was pretty dark to both men. The Boy had to do all the work, except the monotonous, blind, pushing from behind, in whatever direction the Boy dragged the sled.
Now, snow-blindness is not usually dangerous, but it is horribly painful while it lasts. Your eyes swell up and are stabbed continually by cutting pains; your head seems full of acute neuralgia, and often there is fever and other complications. ”

“ It is a curious fact that persons who are near-sighted are generally exempt from the evils of snow-blindness, while it appears to be more malignant with those who are far-sighted in direct ratio to the superior quality of their vision. Lieutenant Schwatka and his companion, the present writer, are both near-sighted, and during the two seasons that they were exposed to the disease neither were at any time affected by snow-blindness ”

“ Sometimes it is necessary to do much of the travelling by night, on account of the reflection of the dazzling rays of the sun on the great, brilliant wastes of snow giving the travellers a disease called snow-blindness, which is painful in the extreme. ”

“ The human body can endure great windless cold, but little cold wind. With the chilling of the muscles the nerve and will-power diminish also. For the reactions of cold, local and general, a leader must be always on the watch.
The sun has three dangers for inexperience. Snow-blindness rarely gives warning. It is often only painfully realized on the following day. Therefore until a man knows the power of his eyes he should use precaution and put on coloured or smoked glasses when he sees the first flash from the prisms on glacier or snow-field. ”

“ Very fine language is sometimes used to express the fact that persons suffer from their eyes becoming inflamed; and there is one well-known traveller, at least, who, when referring to snow-blindness, speaks habitually of the distressing effects which are produced by “the reverberation of the snow.” ”

“ Snow-blindness is common on the mountains and in the plains: the favorite preventive, when goggles are unprocurable, is to blacken the circumorbital region and the sides of the nose with soot—the kohl, surmah, or collyrium of the Far West: the cure is a drop of nitrate of silver or laudanum. ”

“ Years later, I learnt a very simple and certain remedy for snow blindness which I have since used on several occasions with excellent effect for coolies who had neglected to cover their eyes when crossing snow. It is to drop a few drops of castor oil into the eyes and the relief is almost instantaneous. ”

“ They look very smart and present a pleasing contrast to the snow, and they are frequently recommended for mountain use, for the reason that when the eye is dazzled by vast expanses of unbroken white they afford a valuable point of focus, and so act as a preventive to snow-blindness. ”

“ Darwin Depôt, a distance of 120 miles, with 7 days' provisions. We picked up our ski and camped for the night. We have been wondering if the others have got the same wind as us. If so it is right in their face, whereas it is at our back, a treat to what it is facing it. Crean's eyes are pretty bad to-night. Snow-blindness is an awful complaint, and no one I can assure you looks forward with pleasure when it begins to attack. ”

“ Temporary blindness, which sometimes eventuates in permanent loss of sight, occurs during the winter to incautious travellers who pass over the prairies covered with snow, from which the solar light is so brilliantly reflected. ”

“ These exhaust the power of vision by over-stimulating it, but whether the blindness is due to fatigue of the retina or of the cerebral ganglia which preside over sight, it is difficult to decide. This form is much more likely to occur in horses which spend most of their time in darkness, as in unlighted stables or mines, when they are suddenly brought into the sunlight. Snow blindness, however, from prolonged exposure, is common in animals as in man, and the case of the staghound reported by Johan, is by no means an isolated one. ”

“ The snowfields on high ranges of mountains are of a dazzling whiteness; and their bright glare is so great as to distress the eyes of those who walk over them without blue glasses, and even to cause inflammation. At these heights the traveller is not only exposed to the direct 77 rays of the sun, untempered save for a thin veil of rarefied air, but also to an intense glare produced by the little snow-crystals which scatter around the beams of light falling upon them. ”

“ But if the snowfall is very slight, the moisture content of the lower air sometimes is not exhausted before it stops; those large crystals remain at the surface and are not buried out of sight by the later fall. These large, coarse, slablike crystals reflect as well as refract the light of the sun. There is not merely the sparkle and glitter, but also the colour play. Facing north, you see only glittering points of white light; but, facing the sun, you see every colour of the rainbow, and you see it with that coquettish, sudden flash which snow shares only with the most precious of stones. ”

“ But, as I had left my coat in camp for the sake of having my limbs free in climbing, I soon was cold. The wind increased in violence, raising the snow in magnificent drifts that were drawn out in the form of wavering banners blowing in the sun. Toward the end of my stay a succession of small clouds struck against the summit rocks like drifting icebergs, darkening the air as they passed, and producing a chill as definite and sudden as if ice-water had been dashed in my face. This is the kind of cloud in which snow-flowers grow, and I turned and fled. ”

“ Nothing can surpass these vast ridges clad in their winter dress. White and cold, they form a veritable valley of desolation. It is the cold of death, the white mantle of annihilation—something that the brain can scarcely compass. The feeling of solitude in the midst of the whiteness everywhere almost overwhelms the traveller with despair. In places the snow is frequently as much as fifteen feet in depth, deep enough to bury a horse and rider. Sudden storms are likely to overtake the traveller, and he would be snowed in in one of the casuchas. ”

“ During the summer months the sun shines continuously, and this continuous brilliancy is intensified a hundredfold by the reflection from endless fields of glistening, sparkling snow, unrelieved by a single object. The strongest eyes can stand such a blinding glare only a few hours without protection. We always wore heavy-smoked glasses, and when in camp found it impossible to sleep without still further protecting our eyes by tying a narrow band of fur about them to exclude the light. Only when a storm is brewing does this intense light become subdued. ”

“ We crawled at a foot's pace through changeful snow-drifts. The road was obliterated, and it was my duty to keep a petroleum stable-lamp swinging to illuminate the untracked wilderness. My little girl was snugly nested in the hay, and sound asleep with a deep white covering of snow above her. Meanwhile, the drift clave in frozen masses to our faces, lashed by a wind so fierce and keen that it was difficult to breathe it. My forehead-bone ached, as though with neuralgia, from the mere mask of icy snow upon it, plastered on with frost. ”

“ The paths will soon be heaped up to their level. The snowflakes are as large as daisies. When I go out they flutter round me like a swarm of butterflies. Those that fall into the water disappear like shooting stars, leaving no trace behind.
The glass roof of my bedroom is as heavy as a coffin-lid. I sleep with my window open, and when there comes a blast of wind my eyes are filled with snow. This morning, when I woke, my pillow-case was as wet as though I had been crying all night.
Torp already sees us in imagination snowed up and receiving our food supplies down the chimney. ”

“ The light became worse, and the sastrugi indistinguishable. Such a phenomenon always occurs on what we came to call a "snow-blind day." On these days the sky is covered with a white, even pall of cloud, and cloud and plateau seem as one. One walks into a deep trench or a sastruga two feet high without noticing it. The world seems one huge, white void, and the only difference between it and the pitch-dark night is that the one is white and the other black.
Light snow commenced at 2.30 P.M., the wind rising to forty-five miles per hour with heavy drift. Thirteen miles out we pitched camp. ”

“ Animal life hastens to the more genial south; the birds abandon the frozen wastes; the reindeer retires to the shelter of the forests; the fish desert the ice-bound streams; and a terrible silence reigns in the desolate wilderness, broken only by the harsh yelp of a fox or the melancholy hooting of a snow-owl. For some eight or nine months a deep shroud or pall of snow lies on the whitened plains. No cheerful sunbeams irradiate it with a rosy glow; the sky is dull and dark; and it seems as if Nature had been abandoned to eternal Night. ”

“ The dread Spirit of the North had lain in ambush for him a long time, but it had conquered him at last.
They made an unearthly picture,—these two so silent in the drifts. Endless about them lay the snow; the winter forest was deep in its eternal silence, the little spruce trees stood patient and inert and queer, under their heavy loads of snow. Never a voice in all the wastes, never a tear of pity or a stretching hand of mercy,—only the cold, only the silence, only the dread solitude of a land untamed,—the unconquerable wild. ”

“ In a short while our ears, fingers, and toes were almost frozen, and the fast driving snow beat mercilessly against our faces, making our eyes ache. We proceeded like so many blind people, speechless and exhausted, rising slowly higher on the mountain range, and feeling our way with our feet. ”

“ At night our hair crackles and sparkles when we brush it. Next morning there is a foot and a half of finely powdered snow, and still the snow is falling. Strangely loom the châlets through the semi-solid whiteness. Yet the air is now dry and singularly soothing. The pines are heavy with their wadded coverings; now and again one shakes himself in silence, and his burden falls in a white cloud, to leave a black-green patch upon the hillside, whitening again as the imperturbable fall continues. The stakes by the roadside are almost buried. No sound is audible. ”