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I knew he had lately been offered a situation in the Great Sahara, where lions and sandflies made the hermit-life peculiarly attractive and difficult, and had gone to Africa to take possession, so I thought I would look in and see how the atmosphere of this den agreed with its reputation. My surprise was great: the place was newly swept and scoured. Then there was another surprise.

Sandflies do not venture into the dark huts, and a "smudge" keeps them aloof, but the disease is more tolerable than the remedy of inflaming the eyes with acrid smoke and of sitting in a close box, by courtesy termed a room, when the fine pure air makes one pine to be beyond walls.

After long endurance in hopes of becoming inoculated with the virus, I was compelled to defend myself with thick gloves, stockings and a muslin veil made fast to the hat and tucked in under the shirt. After sunset the sandflies retire, and the mosquito sounds her hideous trump; as has been said, however, Pongo-land knows how to receive her. Return to the River.

In less than five minutes she was back again, her feet and hands prickling and sore with the bites of ants and sandflies. She was not at all sorry when dawn came at half-past three. She was disappointed in the creek; it had sounded luxuriously moist from the note of pride in the stationmaster's voice when he mentioned it.