MUSQUITOES. 
24 5 
two-and-twenty feet long, had been killed close by 
the old gateway. The tanks were so filled with 
alligators, that it was dangerous to approach their 
banks. Some of these creatures, however, were so 
tame as to come at the call of a fakeer, and take rice 
from his hand. 
We found the musquitoes so intolerable, that it 
was scarcely possible to obtain any rest at night. 
In fact the whole vicinity has been so neglected, 
that it has become the resort of everything noxious 
and disagreeable. The ground is covered with the 
rankest vegetation, which is permitted to wither and 
rot upon the surface, so that the place is very un- 
healthy from the pestilential effluvia continually 
arising. Though this is an evil easily remedied, still 
the inhabitants permit it to remain with the greatest 
unconcern, preferring to be visited with the most 
frightful distempers, rather than take the trouble to 
remove the cause of them. The soil is so fertile 
that it would yield an immense harvest for the la- 
bour of cultivation ; and yet it is left untilled ex- 
cept a few small patches which return a scanty crop 
to the niggard toil of several poor farmers, who seek 
from it a bare subsistence. 
The morning after we reached Gour, we went out, 
as was our usual practice, with our guns, but the 
jungle was so rank and the swamps so dangerous 
that we were soon glad to return. On our way back 
a large wild sow was shot at by Mr. Daniell, and 
wounded in the hind leg. She was so much disabled 
that she could not make her escape ; but the fierceness 
of her resistance, even though taken at such a dis- 
y 3 
