e
puerile, so that as they ride along, they are constantly manoeuvring
their horses in and out, here and there, in order to avoid trampling upon
some insect or other that presents itself in their path. Yet say they,
the holiest among them occasion inadvertently, the death, every day, of a
great many living creatures. It is to expiate these involuntary murders
that they undergo fasting and penitence, that they recite certain
prayers, and that they make prostrations.

We who had no such scruples, and whose conscience stood upon a solid
basis as to the transmigration of souls, concocted, as effectively as
possible, our anti-louse preparation, doubling the dose of mercury in our
anxiety to kill the greatest practicable number of the vermin that had
been so long tormenting us by day and by night.

It would have been to little purpose merely to kill the present vermin;
it was necessary to withhold any sort of shelter or encouragement from
their too probable successors, and the first point, with this view, was
to wash all our under-clothing, which, for some time past, had not been
subjected to any such operation. For nearly two months since our
departure, we had been wholly dependent, in all respects, upon ourselves,
and this necessity had compelled us to learn a little of various
professions with which we had been previously unacquainted; becoming our
own tailors and shoe menders, for example, when clothes or shoes required
repairs. The course of nomadic life now practically introduced us also
to the occupation of washermen. After boiling some ashes and soaking our
linen in the lye, we next proceeded to wash it in an adjacent pond. One
great stone on which to place the linen when washed, and another
wherewith to beat it while washing, were our only implements of trade;
but we got on very well, for the softness of the pond water gave every
facility for cleansing the articles. Before long, we had the delight of
seeing our linen once more clean; and when, having dried it on the grass,
we folded and took it home to our tent, we were quite radiant with
satisfaction.

The quiet and ease which we enjoyed in this encampment rapidly remedied
the fatigue we had undergone in the marshes. The weather was
magnificent; all that we could have possibly desired. By day, a gentle,
soothing heat; by night, a sky pure and serene; plenty of fuel; excellent
and abundant pasturage; nitrous water, which our camels delighted in; in
a word