e afternoon of Sunday the 17th July I left the
house of Mr. Connelly, and journeyed back to Abercrombie in the stage
waggon from St. Cloud. I had as a fellow-passenger the captain of the
"International" steamboat, whose acquaintance was quickly made. He had
received my letter at Pomme-de-Terre, and most kindly offered his pony
and cart for our joint conveyance to George town that evening; so, having
waited only long enough at Abercrombie to satisfy hunger and get ready
the Red River cart, we left Mr. Nolan's door some little time before
sunset, and turning north along the river held our way towards
Georgetown. The evening was beautifully fine and clear; the plug trotted
steadily on, and darkness soon wrapped its mantle around the prairie. My
new acquaintance had many questions to ask and much information to
impart, and although a Red River cart is not the easiest mode of
conveyance to one who sits amidships between the wheels, still when I
looked to the northern skies and saw the old pointers marking our course
almost due north, and thought that at last I was launched fair on a road
whose termination was the goal for which I had longed so earnestly, I
little recked the rough jolting of the wheels whose revolutions brought
me closer to my journey's end. Shortly after leaving Abercrombie we
passed a small creek in whose leaves and stagnant waters mosquitoes were
numerous.

"If the mosquitoes let us travel," said my companion, as we emerged upon
the prairie again, "we should reach Georgetown to breakfast."

"If the mosquitoes let us travel?" thought I. "Surely he must be
joking!"

I little knew then the significance of the captain's words. I thought
that my experiences of mosquitoes in Indian jungles and Irrawaddy swamps,
to say nothing of my recent wanderings by Mississippi forests, had taught
me something about these pests; but I was doomed to learn a lesson that
night and the following which will cause me never to doubt the
possibility of anything, no matter how formidable or how unlikely it may
appear, connected with mosquitoes. It was about ten o'clock at night when
there rose close to the south-west a small dark cloud scarcely visible
above the horizon. The wind, which was very light, was blowing from the
north-east; so when my attention had been called to the speck of cloud by
my companion I naturally concluded that it could in no way concern us,
but in this I was grievously mistaken. In a very short space of time