that persists for days.

Finally there is the bott-fly, by no means the least unpleasant of the
tribe. Red-headed and with an iridescent blue body, he is very similar
to the bluebottle, and lives in huts and dwellings. But his ways are
different, for he bites a hole into one's skin, usually the back or
arms, and lays an egg therein. In about ten days this egg develops into
a fully grown larva, in other words a white maggot with a black head. It
looks for all the world like a boil until one squeezes it and pushes the
squirming head outside. But woe to him who having squeezed lets go to
get the necessary forceps; for the larva leaps back within, promptly
dies and forms an abscess. Often I have taken as many as thirty or forty
from one man. It is a melancholy comfort to find that this fly is no
respecter of persons, for the Staff themselves have been known to become
affected by this pest.

With the flies may be mentioned as one of the minor horrors of war in
East Africa, one of the little plagues that are sent to mortify our
already over-tortured flesh, the jigger flea. As if there were not
already sufficient trials for us to undergo, an unkind Providence has
sent this pest to rob us of what little enjoyment or elegant leisure
this country might afford. True to her sex, it is the female of the
species that causes all the trouble; the male is comparatively harmless.
Lurking in the dust and grass of camps, she burrows beneath the skin of
our toes, choosing with a calculated ferocity the tender junction of the
nails with the protesting flesh. No sooner is she well ensconced therein
than she commences the supreme business of life, she lays her eggs, by
the million, all enclosed in a little sack. What little measure of sleep
the mosquitoes, the sand flies and the stifling nights have left us,
this relentless parasite destroys. For her presence is disclosed to us
by itching intolerable. Then the skill of the native boys is called
upon, and dusky fingers, well scrubbed in lysol, are armed with a safety
pin, to pick the little interloper out intact. Curses in many languages
descend upon the head of the unlucky boy who fails to remove the sack
entire. For the egg-envelope once broken, abscesses and blood poisoning
may result, and one's toes become an offence to surgery.

All is well, if a drop of iodine be ready to complete the well-conducted
operation; but the poor soldier, whose feet, perforce, are dirty and who
only has the o