beside it.
If the traveller be accompanied by a dray, the tarpauling, is drawn round,
and he sleeps beneath it.

Not amongst the least of the annoyances found here are the ants. There are
three species of the insect, and they are all very large. Many of them are
an inch long, and they bite confoundedly. A hand bitten by some of the
monsters will swell to the size of a man's head. Along the coast, and in
every house, smaller ants prevail, and fleas innumerable. The number of
the latter, which you shall find upon your blanket any day of the year, is
literally not to be computed. No house is free from this little disturber,
who spares neither age nor sex. I have stood upon the sea beach adorned
with white trousers, which in less than ten minutes have been covered with
hundreds of the vermin. It is an easy transition from the trousers to the
inner legs. But this is nothing when you are used to it. The _grey horse_
won't live in the colony. So it is said; at all events none are seen; and
I am very sure that every emigrant ship brings its fair stock. It is a
wise ordination that forbids _their_ settling. The _mawk_ fly is
indigenous, and thrives wonderfully, as you shall hear. This fly is very
like our British bluebottle, with a somewhat greener head, and a body
entirely yellow. I have seen two _mawk_ flies strike (as it seemed) a
joint of meat, just as it was removing from the spit, leaving their fly
blows there. Before the joint had been ten minutes upon the table, small
white mawks were moving upon the surface of the meat in considerable
numbers. If by any chance these animals are suffered to accompany the meat
to the safe or larder, in the course of twenty-four hours the small white
mawks increase to the length of one-eighth of an inch, and are found
crawling in hundreds and moving about, as you have observed the yellow
flies buzzing over the old and rotten carcass of a horse that has been
exposed for weeks. In the winter these creatures are, of course, less
troublesome than in summer. Wire meat-covers are in constant use during
the latter season.

Thus far had got in my epistle, when a torrent of ill news rushed in upon
us, and compelled me to delay my scribble. I am sorry to say, that in
addition to the account which I have already given of the depressed state
of the markets, I must add some dismal intelligence. The markets are in a
deplorable state, and so is the mercantile community in general. Every day
there is a f