208 ANECDOTES OF ANIMALS. 



judice apart, the sleek skin, the sharp head, the long, 

 slender tail, and the keen look of their bright black 

 eyes, ought to be attractions ; but those who have been 

 annoyed with these animals as I have been, can scarcely 

 regard them with anything but dislike. Overspreading 

 the whole world as they do, it is no wonder, where they 

 are not vigorously checked, and where food is abundant, 

 their numbers should amount to something frightful. 

 On a visit to Sierra Leone, I was all day at the Govern- 

 ment House, and going to an upper room to make my 

 toilette, I heard a pattering of little feet close to me, 

 and turning my head, I saw between the floor and the 

 shrunken door of the next apartment a whole army of 

 rats on a peregrination, and giving such an idea of 

 number that, uninitiated as I then was (it being on my 

 first journey to Africa), I was perfectly appalled, and 

 most thankful that I returned that night to sleep in my 

 safer cabin on board ship. This, however, was but the 

 beginning ; and in the next vessel which I entered they 

 were so numerous, that the next time she returned to 

 port she was sunk for a time, as the only means of 

 getting rid of them. Between these creatures and the 

 cockroaches, I thought my poor child and myself must 

 be devoured. 



There is a facility given to the human mind to ac- 

 commodate itself to all circumstances, for which perhaps 

 we are not sufficiently thankful ; and it never was more 

 strongly manifested than in my own case, for both fear 

 and apprehension vanished with habit, and I became re- 

 conciled to those animated creatures which at first seemed 

 to be the bane of my existence. When living in Cape 

 Coast Castle, I used to see the rats come in troops past 

 my door, walking over my black boys as they lay there, 



