The Nile boat or, glimpses of the land of Egypt / by . roasted alive, like a crab inits own shell. Every thing inspires listless, restless, irritableennui, only to be alleviated, if haply at all, by the fumes of theconsoling pipe. It is well if, when thus becalmed and pantingin a Nile boat, you are exempt (as from the recent painting andcleansing of mine was happily my case) from the company ofbugs, fleas, cockroaches, and other creatures more minute and familiar to man. But to the incursions of flies and mosqui-toes you lie helplessly exposed. The former, stingless thoughthey be,
The Nile boat or, glimpses of the land of Egypt / by . roasted alive, like a crab inits own shell. Every thing inspires listless, restless, irritableennui, only to be alleviated, if haply at all, by the fumes of theconsoling pipe. It is well if, when thus becalmed and pantingin a Nile boat, you are exempt (as from the recent painting andcleansing of mine was happily my case) from the company ofbugs, fleas, cockroaches, and other creatures more minute and familiar to man. But to the incursions of flies and mosqui-toes you lie helplessly exposed. The former, stingless thoughthey be, may fairly take the lead as the principal of Egyptsplagues, and at the bare recollection of past sufferings onecannot help being animated with a feeling of vengeance. Theirname is legion. You can neither eat nor drink without therisk of swallowing them, nor doze, or read, or draw, withouta constant trial of temper from their incessant trailing overyour eyes and ears and nostrils. The natives, being usedto it, contrive to drop off into an uneasy slumber, but for. a new comer this is a hopeless attempt. You sit all daywith a fly-switch in your hand, and though a dozen timesyou rise in murderous mood, and clear the walls of the THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT. S5 cabin with wholesale slaughter, a few moments afterwardsthey blacken its panels as before, and you piteously invokethe breeze which would perhaps disperse the buzzing swarmof your mud-born tormentors, or, peradventure, waft youbeyond their reach. In the fat slime of the Delta they areparticularly numerous and active. I was told by a friend, whoone evening pitched his tent on this rich level, that in addi-tion to these plagues, he was visited by a numerous company oftoads, which he kicked out of his tent without much , however, was accidentally left behind; upon which,recumbent on his carpet in the midst of a tormenting swarm offlies and mosquitoes, the travellers eye mechanically creature, perdu in his nook, w
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1840, booksubjectegyptdescriptionandt
