240 



INCIDENTS OF TRAVEL. 



der the vein, when his hand contracted on the 

 bench, it could not have been told that he was un- 

 dergoing an operation of any kind. 



This over, we set out on our return with Mr. 

 Camerden to the ruins, but had hardly left the gate 

 of the cattle-yard, when we met an Indian with his 

 arm in a sling, coming in search of Doctor Cabot. 

 A death-warrant seemed written in his face. His 

 little wife, a girl about fourteen years old, soon to 

 become a mother, was trotting beside him, and his 

 case showed how, in those countries, human life is 

 the sport of accident and ignorance. A few days 

 before, by some awkwardness, he had given his left 

 arm a severe cut near the elbow with a machete. 

 To stop the bleeding, his wife had tied one string 

 as tightly as possible around the wrist, and another 

 in the* hollow of the arm, and so it had remained 

 three days. The treatment had been pretty effect- 

 ual in stopping the bleeding, and it had very nearly 

 stopped the circulation of his blood forever. The 

 hand was shrunken to nothing, and seemed wither- 

 ed ; the part of the arm between the two ligatures 

 was swollen enormously, and the seat of the wound 

 was a mass of corruption. Doctor Cabot took off 

 the fastenings, and endeavoured to teach her to re- 

 store the circulation by friction, or rubbing the arm 

 with the palm of the hand, but she had no more 

 idea of the circulation of the blood than of the 

 revolution of the planets. 



The wound, on being probed, gave out a foul and 



