cockroaches within the camp; just escaping from a she-jaguar, he
satisfies himself, ere he flees, that the print of her claws on the
sand is precisely the size of a pewter dinner-plate; bitten by a
scorpion, he makes sure of his scientific description in case he should
expire of the bite; is the water undrinkable, there is at least some
rational interest in the number of legs possessed by the centipedes
which preoccupy it. This is the highest triumph of man over his
accidents, when he thus turns his pains to gains, and becomes an
entomologist in the tropics.

Meanwhile the rebels kept their own course in the forests, and
occasionally descended upon plantations beside the very river on whose
upper waters the useless troops were sickening and dying. Stedman
himself made several campaigns, with long intervals of illness, before
he came any nearer to the enemy than to burn a deserted village or
destroy a rice-field. Sometimes they left the Charon and the Cerberus
moored by grape-vines to the pine-trees, and made expeditions into the
woods single file. Our ensign, true to himself, gives the minutest
schedule of the order of march, and the oddest little diagram of
manikins with cocked hats, and blacker manikins bearing burdens. First,
negroes with bill-hooks to clear the way; then the van-guard; then the
main body, interspersed with negroes bearing boxes of ball-cartridges;
then the rear-guard, with many more negroes, bearing camp-equipage,
provisions, and new rum, surnamed "kill-devil," and appropriately
followed by a sort of palanquin for the disabled. Thus arrayed, they
marched valorously forth into the woods, to some given point; then they
turned, marched back to the boats, then rowed back to camp, and
straightaway went into the hospital. Immediately upon this, the coast
being clear. Baron and his rebels marched out again and proceeded to
business.