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nearly a fifth of my whole gang. Of these, the 

 medical people assured me that not above seven had 

 any thing whatever the matter with them ; the rest 

 were only feigning sickness out of mere idleness, and 

 in order to sit doing nothing,;while their companions 

 were forced to perform their part of the estate- 

 duty. And sure enough, on Sunday morning they 

 all walked away from the hospital to amuse them- 

 selves, except about seven or eight : they will, 

 perhaps, go to the field for a couple of days; and 

 on Wednesday we may expect to have them all 

 back again, complaining of pains, which (not 

 existing) it is not possible to remove. Jenny (the 

 girl whose hands were bitten) was told by the 

 doctoress, that having been in the hospital all the 

 week, she ought not, for very shame, to go out 

 on Sunday. She answered, " She wanted to go to 

 the mountains, and go she would. " " Then/' said 

 the doctoress, " you must not come back again 

 on Monday at least." " Yes," Jenny said, " she 

 should come back and back this morning Jenny 

 came. But as her wounds were almost completely 

 well, she had tied packthread round them so as to 

 cut deep into the flesh, had rubbed dirt into them, 

 and, in short, had played such tricks as nearly to 

 produce a mortification in one of her fingers. 



The most worthless fellow on the whole property 

 is one Nato, — a thief, a liar, a runaway, and one 

 who has never been two days together out of the 

 hospital since my arrival, although he has nothing 



