at length he returned to the camp he was in the highest
spirits, for the somewhat incomprehensible reason that Yahiti had
informed him that the country lying between the Catu and the Mangeroma
territories was extraordinarily difficult, and full of the most weird
and terrible perils.

On the following morning the two friends were astir with the dawn, Earle
having expressed a desire to inspect the great swamp in the
neighbourhood, to which he attributed the epidemic of fever from which
the inhabitants of the village were suffering. This swamp was situated
at the distance of about a mile south-east from the village, and was of
such an extent that whenever the wind blew from either the east or the
south--these being the prevailing winds there--the pestiferous odours
arising from it were wafted directly toward the village; and Earle's
idea was to investigate, with the view of ascertaining whether anything
could be done to reclaim the swamp, failing which he proposed to
recommend the Catus to abandon the place and take up their abode
elsewhere.

Upon reaching the swamp, it was found to lie in a shallow depression,
roughly circular in shape and some three miles in diameter, its deepest
part--about eight feet--being nearest the village, while at its upper
extremity it was fed by a small stream of a capacity just about
sufficient to neutralise the constant process of evaporation without
being enough to produce an overflow. Further than that, it occupied
such a position that a trench little more than a quarter of a mile in
length and averaging a depth of about nine feet was all that was needed
to drain the swamp by carrying off the water and discharging it into a
valley some three-hundred feet deep.

An alternative scheme which Earle also investigated was the diversion of
the stream which supplied the swamp with water; and this was also found
possible by cutting a trench about two hundred yards long; but it was
open to the objection that, in order to do it, the workers would be
obliged to walk a distance of nearly twelve miles daily to and from
their work, and he doubted whether the Catus were energetic enough to do
it.

The task of convincing the Catus that they must do away with the swamp
or abandon the village, unless they were prepared continually to suffer
from fever, was a long and troublesome one, the Indians having a strong
constitutional objection to anything in the nature of hard work; but
Earle succeeded at leng