BLOOD-SUCKERS. 493 



tion at the ankles, and found my stockings red vriih. 

 T)lood. Turning tliem down, I found both ankles 

 perfectly fringed witk blood-suckers, some of which 

 had filled themselves until they seemed ready to 

 burst. One had even crawled down to my foot, 

 and made an incision which allowed the blood 

 to pour out through my canvas shoe. All this 

 day we have suffered ft'om these disgusting pests. 

 Our horses became quite striped with their own 

 blood, and a doo; that followed us looked as if 

 he had run through a pool of clotted gore before we 

 reached the highway again. Of all the pests I have 

 experienced in the tropics, or in any land, whether 

 mosquitoes, black flies, ants, snakes, or viler vermin, 

 these are the most annoying and disgusting. There 

 is somethinsT almost unendurable in the thouQ-ht 

 that these slimy worms are lancing you and sucking 

 out your life-blood, yet the Resident informs me that 

 he has travelled many times through the forests in 

 this region when these animals were far more numer- 

 ous and tormenting than they have been to-day. 

 Sometimes he has known them to drop from the 

 leaves upon the heads and into the necks of all 

 who chanced to pass that way. 



Returning two paals toward the highway, we took 

 a path through a magnificent forest in a more easter- 

 ly direction, for about the same distance, to Ayar 

 Sumpur, a brook where the coal again appears on its 

 sides and in its bed. The layers seen at Suban were 

 not more than two or three feet thick, but here they 

 are from six to ten. Between this i)lace and Suban 

 coal again outcrops on the banks of the Kamuning. 



