448 THE CHEGOE OF GUIANA. 



most insects, this insidious miner contrives to work its way quite 

 under your skin, and there remains to rear a numerous progeny. 

 I once had the curiosity to watch the movements of a chegoe on the 

 back of my hand, a part not usually selected by it to form a settlement. 

 It worked its way pretty rapidly for so small an insect. In half an 

 hour it had bored quite through the skin, and was completely out of 

 sight. Not wishful to encourage its intended colony, " Avast, there ! 

 my good little fellow," said I : "we must part company without loss 

 of time. I cannot afford to keep you, and a numerous family, for 

 nothing ; you would soon eat me out of house and home." On say- 

 ing this, I applied the point of my penknife to the place where the 

 chegoe had entered, and turned it loose upon the world again. 



In the plantations of Guiana, there is generally an old negress, 

 known by the name of Granny, a kind of " Junonis anus," who loiters 

 about the negro yard, and is supposed to take charge of the little 

 negroes who are too young to work. Towards the close of day, you 

 will sometimes hear the most dismal cries of woe coming from that 

 quarter. Old Granny is then at work, grubbing the chegoe nests out 

 of the feet of the sable urchins, and filling the holes with lime juice 

 and Cayenne pepper. This searching compound has two duties to 

 perform : first, it causes death to any remaining chegoe in the hole ; 

 and, secondly, it acts as a kind of birch-rod to the unruly brats, by which 

 they are warned, to their cost, not to conceal their chegoes in future ; 

 for, afraid of encountering old Granny's tomahawk, many of them 

 prefer to let the chegoes riot in their flesh, rather than come under 

 her dissecting hand. 



A knowing eye may always perceive when the feet of negroes are 

 the abode of the chegoe. They dare not place their feet firmly on 

 the ground, on account of the pain which such a position would give 

 them ; but they hobble along with their toes turned up ; and by this 

 you know that they are not suffering from tubboes (a remnant of the 

 yaws), but from the actual depredations of the chegoes, which have 

 penetrated under the nails of the toes, and there formed sores, which, 

 if not attended to, would, erelong, become foul and corroding ulcers. 

 As I seldom had a shoe or stocking on my foot from the time that I 

 finally left the sea-coast in 1812, the chegoe was a source of peipetual 

 disquietude to me. I found it necessary to examine my feet every 



