INTERIOR OF AN INDIAN LODGE. 167 



myself on the floor, and now quite understand 

 what being suffocated in a chimney is like. 



Once more enabled to see, it was easy to dis- 

 cover the secret : there being no place for the 

 smoke to escape, it accumulates at the top of the 

 shed, and one literally, not figuratively, 'lives 

 under a cloud.' There was a hum and a burr, 

 as in a nest of angry hornets ; a din in- 

 creased by the dogs, that fought and rolled in 

 where I sat ; and being by no means particular 

 whether they bit my legs or any other man's, 

 it required unwonted agility to keep clear. 



During an interval of peace, it was easy to 

 make out that the slave was coming. Alas ! how 

 fleeting are imaginary pictures poetic dreams 

 castles in the air ! Half crouching, and waddling 

 rather than walking, came my ideal ; her only 

 covering, a ragged, filthy old blanket, her face 

 begrimed with the dirt and paint of a lifetime ; 

 short, fat, repulsive, the incarnation of ugliness, 

 a very Hecate ! All my romance vanished like a 

 dissolving-view. For this had I been squeezed 

 nearly to death, suffocated, poisoned with a 

 noxious stench, my legs imperilled by infuriated 

 curs, my ears deafened, half devoured by insati- 

 able blood-suckers? to aid in paying 501. for the 

 ugliest old savage eyes ever beheld ! 



