^86 EXPLANATORY INDEX. 



scarcely a traveller in the "West Indies who writes with the 

 least patience about this more than troublesome insect. There 

 is some credit in facing a rattlesnake, killing a jaguar, or in 

 braving the many dangers of tropical travel, but there is 

 none in becoming the victim of a flea, though the apparently 

 insignificant enemy may, unless its attacks be properly re- 

 pelled, cause the loss of a limb, or even of life. 



In one of his essays Waterton has extended the information 

 given in his Wanderings. 



" In the plantations of Guiana thero is generally an old ne- 

 gress 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 Chigoe 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 ; firstly, it causes death to any remaining Chigoe in 

 the hole ; and secondly, it acts as a kind of a birch rod to 

 the unruly brats, by which they are warned, to their cost, 

 not to conceal their Chigoes in future ; for, afraid of en- 

 countering old Granny's tomahawk, many of them prefer to 

 let the Chigoes riot in their flesh, rather than come under 

 her dissecting hand. 



" A knowing eye may always perceive when the feet of ne- 

 groes are the abode of the Chigoe. 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 Chigoes, which have penetrated 

 under the nails of the toes, and then formed sores, which, if 

 not attended to, would, ere long, 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 Chigoe 



