t appeared to grow hot in proportion as the evening advanced.

The south-western sky was again banked up by black clouds, from which
the sheet lightning never ceased to burst. Under other circumstances the
scene would have been viewed as one of infinite grandeur; but, at
present, every consideration became absorbed by our sufferings, for to
this the affair really amounted.

This night I found it impossible to look in upon the cabin; I therefore
made a request to the captain that I might be permitted to have a
mattress on deck: but this, he told me, could not be; there was an
existing regulation which positively forbade sleeping upon the deck of a
canal packet; indeed, he assured me that this could only be done at the
peril of life, with the certainty of catching fever and ague. I appeared
to submit to his well-meant arguments; but inwardly resolved, _coute qui
coute_, not to sleep within the den below, which exhibited a scene of
suffocation and its consequences that defies description.

I got my cloak up, filled my hat with cigars, and, planting myself about
the centre of the deck, here resolved, _malgre_ dews and musquitoes, to
weather it through the night.

"What is this name of the country we are now passing?" I inquired of one
of the boatmen who joined me about the first hour of morning.

"Why sir, this is called the Cedar Swamp," answered the man, to whom I
handed a cigar, in order to retain his society and create more smoke,
weak as was the defence against the hungry swarms surrounding us on all
sides.

"We have not much more of this Cedar Swamp to get through, I hope?"
inquired I, seeking for some consolatory information.

"About fifty miles more, I guess," was the reply of my companion,
accompanying each word with a sharp slap on the back of his hand, or on
his cheek or forehead.

"Thank Heaven!" I involuntarily exclaimed, drawing my cloak closer about
me, although the heat was killing; "we shall after that escape in some
sort, I hope, from these legions of musquitoes?"

"I guess not quite," replied the man; "they are as thick, if not
thicker, in the Long Swamp."

"The Long Swamp!" I repeated: "what a horrible name for a country! Does
the canal run far through it?"

"No, not so very far, only about eighty miles."

"We've then done with swamps, I hope, my friend?" I inquired, as he kept
puffing and slapping on with unwearied constancy.

"Why, yes, there's not a heap more swamp, that is to say, not