YIELDING TO CIRCUMSTANCES. 231 
turn to the tents there were no signs of life but an occasional 
snore, the noises of hares, porcupines, and squirrels in the 
grove hard by, and the two songsters singing so merrily as 
to drown the music of the musquitoes. On examining my 
watch I learned that it was five o’clock. TI therefore deter- 
mined on arousing the cook and the gafters. They arose 
with reluctance, rubbed their eyes, washed their faces and 
hands in the river, and that was all the toilet-making needed, 
for they had slept with their boots and shoes on as protec- 
tion against flies. John, the captain of the gang, because of 
his superior Milesian intelligence, who could speak equally 
well bad Enelish and villainous French, informed me that it 
never had been the custom under Dr. Bluff, of the First Fusi- 
leers, or any gentleman who had previously fished that river, 
to rise before seven, or to commence fishing before nine. 
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5 
Well, then, I replied, we Yankees will teach you a new lesson. 
But, upon ascertaining that my friends were opposed to ris- 
ing early, or fishing before breakfast, I yielded; and thence- 
forward the cook and guides suited their own comfort about 
rising, and we did not get started for angling until the sun 
had scorched the toes and dried the whistles of the musqui- 
toes. 
But it seemed that the noise caused from mustering the 
men had awakened the doctor, who crawled out of his tent 
with modest care for fear of arousing the other two inmates, 
when he mildly saluted me with “ Good morning; how came 
your eye out?” T replied that my eyes were good enough 
to pereeive that three or four bites from black flies had 
changed his phiz into a picture of a Chinese monstrosity. 
“Vou don’t say so!” he ejaculated. “Where?” T pointed 
to one of his eyes, his bare caput, his face, ete. On examin- 
ing them, he forthwith applied ammonia to the bites, and 
bathed mine also with it. 
Smudge fires were at once made before our tents and ex- 
temporized breakfast-place. Our cudsinier was soon engaged 
at frying pork and Bermuda onions, broiling salmon, making 
