EXPLANATORY INDEX. 387 



was a source of perpetual disquietude to me. I found it 

 necessary to examine my feet every evening, in order to 

 counteract the career of tliis extraordinary insect. Occasion- 

 ally, at one overhauling, I have broken up no less than four 

 of its establishments under the toe-nails. 



" In 1825, a day or two before I left Guiana, wishful to try 

 how this puny creature and myself would agree during a sea 

 voyage, I purposely went to a place where it abounded, not 

 doubting but that some needy individual of its tribe would 

 attempt to better its condition. Ere long a pleasant and 

 agreeable kind of itching under the bend of the great toe 

 informed me that a Chigoe had bored for a settlement. In 

 three days after we had sailed a change of colour took 

 place in the skin, just at the spot where the Chigoe had 

 entered, appearing somewhat like a blue pea. By the time 

 we were in the latitude of Antigua my guest had become 

 insupportable, and I saw there was an immediate necessity 

 for his discharge. Wherefore, I turned him and his numerous 

 family adrift, and poured spirits of turpentine into the cavity 

 which they had occupied, in order to prevent the remotest 

 chance of a regeneration. 



" The Indian and negro wenches perform the operation of 

 extracting Chigoes with surprising skill. They take a pin, 

 and, by a very slow process, they lay the part bare, and con- 

 trive to work quite round the bag which contains the Chigoe 

 and its offspring. As soon as this has been effected, they 

 turn the bag out, whole and uninjured, by which means none 

 are left in the hole to form a new colony. For my own part 

 I never trouble these gentle operators, although I have looked 

 on many a time, and admired their exquisite skill, while they 

 were fingering the toes of my acquaintance. 



" Once, however, I had it not in my power to be my own 

 surgeon, and on that occasion a faithful old negro performed 

 the -friendly office. I was descending the Demerara, with an 

 inveterate tertian ague ; and I was so much exhausted by 

 sitting upright in the canoe that I had no sooner got ashore 



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