It will only take a few minutes longer." In spite of their efforts at self-defence, faces, hands, and Cabot's bare legs were covered with blood before their task was completed, and they were once more in the boat pulling furiously for the wind-swept water of the open bay.
"I never expected to find mosquitoes this far north," said Cabot, as the pests began to disappear before the freshening breeze and the rowers paused for breath.
"Strangers are apt to be unpleasantly surprised by them," replied White, "but they are here all the same, and they extend as far north as any white man has ever been.

I have been told that they are as bad in Greenland as here, and I expect they flourish at the North Pole itself.
They certainly are the curse of Labrador, and until ice makes in the fall they effectually prevent all travel into the interior.

Even the Indians have to come to the coast in summer to escape them, while the whites who visit this country for the fishing make their settlements on the barest and most wind-swept places.

The few who live here the year round have summer homes on the coast, but build their winter houses inland, at the heads of bays or the mouths of rivers, where there is timber to afford some protection from the cold.

Those are winter houses back there." "I wondered why they were abandoned," said Cabot, "but I don't any longer." "By the way," suggested White, "you forgot to try the trout fishing.
Shall we go back ?" "I wouldn't go fishing on that stream if every trout in it was of solid gold and I could scoop them out with my hands," asserted Cabot.