At dawn next morning we made coffee and a hasty breakfast, fixed up as
well as we could in our sylvan dressing-rooms, and pushed on; for it is
settled that traveling between eleven and two will have to be given up
unless we want to be roasted alive. H. grew worse. He suffered terribly,
and the rest of us as much to see him pulling in such a state of
exhaustion. Max would not trust either of us to steer. About eleven we
reached the landing of a plantation. Max walked up to the house and
returned with the owner, an old gentleman living alone with his slaves.
The housekeeper, a young colored girl, could not be surpassed in her
graceful efforts to make us comfortable and anticipate every want. I was
so anxious about H. that I remember nothing except that the cold
drinking-water taken from a cistern beneath the building, into which
only the winter rains were allowed to fall, was like an elixir. They
offered luscious peaches that, with such water, were nectar and ambrosia
to our parched lips. At night the housekeeper said she was sorry they
had no mosquito-bars ready, and hoped the mosquitos would not be thick,
but they came out in legions. I knew that on sleep that night depended
recovery or illness for H., and all possibility of proceeding next day.
So I sat up fanning away mosquitos that he might sleep, toppling over
now and then on the pillows till roused by his stirring. I contrived to
keep this up till, as the chill before dawn came, they abated and I got
a short sleep. Then, with the aid of cold water, a fresh toilet, and a
good breakfast, I braced up for another day's baking in the boat.

If I had been well and strong as usual, the discomforts of such a
journey would not have seemed so much to me; but I was still weak from
the effects of the fever, and annoyed by a worrying toothache which
there had been no dentist to rid me of in our village.

Having paid and dismissed the boat's watchman, we started and traveled