Page:Journal of the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks.djvu/433

Rh told us that it did not commonly shift so suddenly, and were loth to believe that the westerly winds were really set in for several days after.

Dr. Solander had recovered enough to be able to walk about the house, but gathered strength very slowly. I myself was given to understand that curing my ague was of very little consequence while the cause remained in the badness of the air. The physician, however, bled me, and gave me frequent gentle purges, which he told me would make the attacks less violent, as was really the case. They came generally about two or three in the afternoon, a time when everybody in these climates is always asleep, and by four or five I had generally recovered sufficiently to get up and walk in the garden. The rainy season had now set in, and we had generally some rain in the night; the days were more or less cloudy, and sometimes wet; this, however, was not always the case, for we once had a whole week of very clear weather.

The frogs in the ditches, whose voices were ten times louder than those of European ones, made a noise almost intolerable on nights when rain was to be expected; and the mosquitos or gnats, who had been sufficiently troublesome even in the dry time, were now breeding in every splash of water, and became innumerable, especially in the moonlight nights. Their stings, however, though painful and troublesome enough at the time, never continued to itch above half an hour; so that no man in the daytime was troubled with the bites of the night before. Indeed, I never met with any whose bites caused swellings remaining twenty-four hours, except the midges or gnats of Lincolnshire (which are identically the same insect as is called mosquito in most parts of the world) and the sand flies of North America.

1st December. About this time Dr. Solander had a return of his fever, which increased gradually for four or five days, when he became once more in imminent danger.

7th. We received the agreeable news of the ship's arrival in the road, having completed all her rigging, etc., and having