A Few Days' Exploration Made Me Well Acquainted With The
Surrounding Country.
I was a long way from the road in the forest
which I had first visited, and for some distance around my house
were old clearings and cottages.
I found a few good butterflies,
but beetles were very scarce, and even rotten timber and newly-
felled trees (generally so productive) here produced scarcely
anything. This convinced me that there was not a sufficient
extent of forest in the neighbourhood to make the place worth
staying at long, but it was too late now to think of going
further, as in about a month the wet season would begin; so I
resolved to stay here and get what was to be had. Unfortunately,
after a few days I became ill with a low fever which produced
excessive lassitude and disinclination to all exertion. In vain I
endeavoured to shake it off; all I could do was to stroll quietly
each day for an hour about the gardens near, and to the well,
where some good insects were occasionally to be found; and the
rest of the day to wait quietly at home, and receive what beetles
and shells my little corps of collectors brought me daily. I
imputed my illness chiefly to the water, which was procured
from shallow wells, around which there was almost always a
stagnant puddle in which the buffaloes wallowed. Close to my
house was an enclosed mudhole where three buffaloes were shut up
every night, and the effluvia from which freely entered through
the open bamboo floor.
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