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The heart of a continent : vol.1 |
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gullies, and then to arrive at the top and find ourselves still
hedged in by trunks of trees, and able to see nothing whatever
beyond. We were, too, afflicted by a scourge of mosquitoes
and midges. In no part of India have I felt them so much.
In the daytime we had the midges driving us wild with their
irritating pricks, and at nights the mosquitoes in clouds. By
simply closing the hand a dozen of them could be caught at
any time. Of course we had to wear veils the whole day long,
and keep our hands in our pockets or wrapped round with
cloth whenever we could ; but even then we suffered badly, and
washing was a positive torture. Gad-flies were another form
of torture invented for these parts. They would attack us
pretty constantly, but it was chiefly to the poor animals that
they directed their attention, and the wretched mules were
often covered with blood and driven wild by their attacks.
At night we would put up in a sable-hunter's hut. These
are met with every twelve or fifteen miles, and each is the
head-quarters of a party of hunters who trap sables and also
seek the ginseng root—the root of a plant upon which the
Chinese set great store for medicinal purposes. These huts
were suitable enough for the small parties who ordinarily
inhabited them, but when our large party came in addition
they were crammed tight. We had to sleep in them, for to
sleep outside amongst the swarms of mosquitoes and in the
damp of the forest was almost impossible. We therefore
packed ourselves into the huts, and were sometimes so tightly
squeezed in the row on the kang, that we had to lie heads and
tails with the Chinamen, to get ourselves all in. We had also
to keep a fire burning to raise smoke for the purpose of driving
off the mosquitoes ; so the heat on a summer's night and the
state of the atmosphere inside may be imagined! We, of
course, got quite inadequate rest, and that period of our journey
was a very trying one.
These hunters received us, as a rule, very well, but theirs
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