was at last rewarded; for several rods farther on, we emerged upon a
little level grassy nook among the brushwood, and by an extraordinary
dispensation of fortune, the weeds and floating sticks, which elsewhere
covered the pool, seemed to have drawn apart, and left a few yards of
clear water just in front of this favored spot. We sounded it with a
stick; it was four feet deep; we lifted a specimen in our cupped hands;
it seemed reasonably transparent, so we decided that the time for action
was arrived. But our ablutions were suddenly interrupted by ten
thousand punctures, like poisoned needles, and the humming of myriads
of over-grown mosquitoes, rising in all directions from their native mud
and slime and swarming to the feast. We were fain to beat a retreat with
all possible speed.

We made toward the tents, much refreshed by the bath which the heat of
the weather, joined to our prejudices, had rendered very desirable.

"What's the matter with the captain? look at him!" said Shaw. The
captain stood alone on the prairie, swinging his hat violently around
his head, and lifting first one foot and then the other, without moving
from the spot. First he looked down to the ground with an air of
supreme abhorrence; then he gazed upward with a perplexed and indignant
countenance, as if trying to trace the flight of an unseen enemy. We
called to know what was the matter; but he replied only by execrations
directed against some unknown object. We approached, when our ears were
saluted by a droning sound, as if twenty bee-hives had been overturned
at once. The air above was full of large black insects, in a state of
great commotion, and multitudes were flying about just above the tops of
the grass blades.

"Don't be afraid," called the captain, observing us recoil. "The brutes