“ A TRAMP WITH REDSKINS,” 261 
and to learn by experience what the Redskin has to 
endure when his whole skin is riddled by these vile black, 
blister-raising, beasts. 
My temper certainly did not pass through the ordeal 
as satisfactorily as does that of the ordinary Red- 
man; and when GABRIEL at last brought my clothes he 
uncomplainingly received reproaches from which he 
certainly ought to have been saved by the good work 
which he had by that time accomplished, by his own 
efforts and by compelling the assistance of the other 
men, in safely getting across the whole party, women, 
children and baggage included. How this feat was 
accomplished, I never knew; for my eyes were closed by 
my own small woes. 
One of the most fertile subje€ts of wonder which much 
travel has suggested to me is the extraordinary rapidity 
with which one may pass from what seems a hopeless 
and endless state of discomfort to one of supreme and 
guite unreasonable comfort. Often the mere cessation 
of discomfort, if this has only been acute enough, is 
sufficient to cause quite extraordinary comfort. For 
instance, many a time, throughout a day passed under full 
exposure to soaking tropical rain, and to that intense 
tropical cold which, under these conditions, is consistent 
with a high state of the thermometer, one’s spirits sink 
lower and lower, under the influence both of the discomfort 
one is actually suffering at the moment and also of the 
creeping thought of the difficulty presently to be met in 
making a dry camp for the night. Yet, evening having 
come, one’s Redskinned companions manipulate a small 
square of tarpaulin in such a way that one’s hammock is 
slung up dry under it; then these same good friends, 
LL 
