had
formed, to talk with every one of them until he should recognize the
voice of the false boatman.

He himself, besides, was not to remain at Saigon. After a first
expedition, which kept him away for two months, he obtained command of
a steam-sloop, which was ordered to explore and to take all the bearings
of the River Kamboja, from the sea to Mitho, the second city of Cochin
China. This was no easy task; for the Kamboja had already defeated the
efforts of several hydrographic engineers by its capricious and constant
changes, every pass and every turn nearly changing with the monsoons in
direction and depth.

But the mission had its own difficulties and dangers. The Kamboja is not
only obstructed by foul swamps; but it flows through vast marshy plains,
which, in the season of rains, are covered with water; while in the
dry season, under the burning rays of the sun, they exhale that fatal
malaria which has cost already thousands of valuable lives.

Daniel was to experience its effects but too soon. In less than a week
after he had set out, he saw three of the men who had been put under
his orders die before his eyes, after a few hours' illness, and amid
atrocious convulsions. They had the cholera. During the next four
months, seven succumbed to fevers which they had contracted in these
pestilential swamps. And towards the end of the expedition, when the
work was nearly done, the survivors were so emaciated, that they had
hardly strength enough to hold themselves up. Daniel alone had not yet
suffered from these terrible scourges. God knows, however, that he had
not spared himself, nor ever hesitated to do what he thought he ought
to do. To sustain, to electrify these men, exhausted as they were by
sickness, and irritated at wasting their lives upon work that had no
reward, a leader was required who should possess uncommon intrepidity,
and who should treat danger as an enemy who is to be defied only by
facing him; and such a leader they found in Daniel.

He had told Sarah Brandon on the eve of his departure,--

"With a love like mine, with a hatred like mine, in the heart, one can
defy all things. The murderous climate is not going to harm me; and, if
I had six balls in my body, I should still find strength enough to come
and call you to account for what you have done to Henrietta before I
die."

He certainly had had need of all that dauntless energy which passion
inspires to sustain him in his trials. But alas! h