ure; and therefore this disease has also been
called elephantiasis by the Arabian physicians; who, together with the
Malabrians, among whom it is endemial, attribute it to the drinking
bad waters, and the too sudden transitions from heat to cold.

CHAPTER VI.

The Cacique's Conduct changes.--Description of the Indian Mode of
Bird-fowling.--Their Religion.--Mr Elliot, our Surgeon, dies.--Transactions
on our Journey.--Miserable Situation to which we are reduced.

Our cacique now made us understand that we must embark directly in the same
canoe which brought us, and return to our companions; and that the Indians
we were about to leave would join us in a few days, when we should all set
out in a body, in order to proceed to the northward. In our way back
nothing very material happened; but upon our arrival, which was the next
day, we found Mr Elliot, the surgeon, in a very bad way; his illness had
been continually increasing since we left him. Mr Hamilton and Mr Campbell
were almost starved, having fared very ill since we left them; a few sea-
eggs were all the subsistence they had lived upon, and these procured by
the cacique's wife in the manner I mentioned before. This woman was the
very reverse of my hostess; and as she found her husband was of so much
consequence to us, took upon her with much haughtiness, and treated us as
dependants and slaves. He was not more engaging in his carriage towards us;
he would give no part of what he had to spare to any but Captain Cheap,
whom his interest led him to prefer to the rest, though our wants were
often greater. The captain, on his part, contributed to keep us in this
abject situation, by approving this distinction the cacique shewed to him.
Had he treated us with not quite so much distance, the cacique might have
been more regardful of our wants. The little regard and attention which our
necessitous condition drew from Captain Cheap, may be imputed likewise, in
some measure, to the effects of a mind soured by a series of crosses and
disappointments; which, indeed, had operated on us all to a great neglect
of each other, and sometimes of ourselves.

We were not suffered to be in the same wigwam with the cacique and his
wife, which, if we had had any countenance from Captain Cheap, would not
have been refused. What we had made for ourselves was in such a bungling
manner, that it scarce deserved the name even of this wretched sort of
habitation. But our un