BIOGRAPHY. 27 



ing land from water. At Margate I was once within a single 

 step of falling over the cliff, whose edges corresponded so 

 exactly in colour with the sea and rocks below, that, had 

 it not been for the information conveyed by a stick, I 

 must have been instantly killed. Several persons, indeed, 

 have lately been killed at the same spot. 



Thinking that he was at the gangway, he stepped over 

 the edge of the quay, and fell fifteen feet into the water, 

 sinking under the paddle-box, and only finding support 

 by catching at the wheel itself. Thence he was rescued ; 

 but the cold winds blowing on him as he stood wet and 

 dripping on the deck of the steamer, brought on a violent 

 attack of fever. He had recourse to his usual double 

 remedy, the lancet and calomel, and recovered sufficiently 

 to attend the great religious festival at Bruges, for the sake 

 of which he had left England. 



His reliance on the lancet and calomel was almost in- 

 credible. In these times the former is hardly ever used, 

 and the latter has been abandoned by a great number of 

 medical men. But in Waterton's early days these were 

 the principal remedies, and he never lost faith in them. 

 When I last saw him in 1863, he told me that he had 

 been bled one hundred and sixty times, mostly by his own 

 hand. 



The amount of blood which he would take at a time 

 from his spare and almost emaciated frame was positively 

 horrifying. On this occasion he lost twenty-five ounces 

 of blood, and next morning took twenty grains of jalap, 

 mixed with ten grains of calomel. It was no wonder that 

 the vampire bat of Guiana would never bite him, though 

 he left his foot invitingly out of the hammock in order to 

 attract it. He used to complain that the bat never could 

 be induced to bleed him, though it would attack a man 

 lying in the next hammock ; but he might have antici- 



