172 GLIMPSES OF NATURE 



dropped off to sleep, but were soon awoke by the roll 

 and thunder of the carts over the stones. Then suc- 

 ceeded a pause of, say, fifteen minutes, just sufficient 

 to allow you to fall off to sleep again. 



Out of this slumber you were awoke by the next 

 cart ; and so on, this wretched succession of noise and 

 peace persisted for at least six hours. Commend me 

 to a night which is disturbed at regular intervals for 

 causing one to rise ill-tempered and haggard in the 

 morning. After two nights of this treatment one 

 began to appreciate the infernal ingenuity of the 

 Chinese torture, which consists in waking a man 

 every five or ten minutes for days and nights on end. 



Nor was this all. A big, brawny Dutchman, wearing 

 Wellington boots, was in the habit of strolling upstairs 

 to bed about midnight. When one was in the " beauty- 

 sleep," this adipose Hollander would first of all half- 

 wake me with his Jumbo-like tramp upstairs. Then 

 when he got overhead, he slammed his door with a 

 noise fit to wake the Seven Sleepers ; and thereafter 

 began a series of pedestrian exercises in his bed- 

 room, ending with a perfect salvo of artillery made by 

 casting off his Wellington boots, flinging them outside 

 his door half-way along the passage, and slamming the 

 door once again as a grand finale to his preparations 

 for slumber. 



This is a grievance one has to submit to in Eng- 

 land, of course, but it is a grievance all the same. 

 The hotel servants in the morning laughed and chat- 

 tered, and made noise enough in the passages ; and, 

 finally, when it was time for the morning dip in the 

 sea, you felt disposed to turn over, and through sheer 

 exhaustion take not forty but a hundred winks. The 

 fact is, that both at home and abroad we are not at 



