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, 
avery 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 50/. for the 
ugliest old savage eyes ever beheld! 
