A NIGHT HUNT UP THE CUNGAMUNCK. 49% 
contrary to our expectation, not one showed itself to tempt 
me, although it was three miles up to where this stream 
outlets in Elm Lake. 
It was in the last half mile of our approach to this and 
around its mashy shores, that we looked for the sport of the 
night to begin in earnest; and any that might have occurred 
on the way would have been incidental, and could therefore 
be well dispensed with for the higher and more placid enjoy- 
ment of the scene. As we approached the Lake the stream 
became more shallow, and we were compelled at last to get 
out and let our guide drag the boat up the ripples. The sun 
was now setting, and at the first place where the low water 
thus compelled us to land for a few moments, we were 
suddenly introduced to that most inconceivable torment, the 
black gnat ! 
As the shades of evening advance, these gnats, which at 
first hover near the surface of the water, rise slowly on the 
strata of miasmatic air. Wishing to examine some object on 
the sand-bar more closely, I stooped, when instantly, as if an 
infinitesimal shower of red-hot sand or fine vitriol drops 
had been dashed into my face and eyes, I felt them—blister- 
ing against neck and bosom, up sleeves and pants, they at 
once invested me in a maddening reality of the fabled terrors 
of the shirt of Nessus! No imagination is sufficiently vivid 
to.conceive the intensity of that keen-poisoned, stinging 
nettle-rash with which we found ourselves suddenly assailed 
by this invisible torturer from Acheron, rising to meet us on 
its thick, pestilent airs. I did not know what it meant at 
first, and, blinded with the pain, rushed with the instinct of 
the cold water man, to plunge my face in the stream for 
relief. This was, fortunately, the best thing I could have 
done; and I now gasped out, “George! George! what is 
it!” “The gnats, sir! the gnats—you had better put on 
your veil !”’ 
I did so as quickly as possible ; and when I turned, there 
ad 
