242 
THE CHEGOE. 
suffering from tubboes (a remnant of the yaws), but 
from the actual depreciations of the chegoes, which 
have penetrated under the nails of the toes, and 
there 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 
chegoe was a source of perpetual disquietude to me- 
I found it necessary to examine my feet every evening, 
in order to counteract the career of this extraordi- 
nary insect. Occasionally, at one overhauling, I have 
broken up no less than four of its establishments 
under the toe nails. 
In 1825, a day or two before I left Guiana, wish- 
ful to try how this puny creature and myself would 
agree during a sea voyage, I purposely went to a 
place where it abounded, not doubting but that 
some needy individual of its tribe would attempt to 
better its condition. Ere long, a pleasant and 
agreeable kind of itching under the bend of the great 
toe informed me that a chegoe had bored for a 
settlement. In the three days after we had sailed, 
a change of colour took place in the skin, just at 
the spot where the chegoe had entered, appearing 
somewhat like a blue pea. By the time we were in 
the latitude of Antigua, my guest had become in- 
supportable: and I saw there was an immediate 
necessity for his discharge. Wherefore, I turned 
him and his numerous family adrift, and poured 
spirits of turpentine into the cavity which they had 
occupied, in order to prevent the remotest chance of 
a regeneration. 
