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Dividend Two Directory 19
Page 02
On October 1st we had more trouble cutting our way through, as we again found great ferns and palms, especially near streamlets of water, and quantities of fallen trees, which made us continually deviate from our direction. The forest was indeed dirty and much entangled in that section, and thus made our march painful, liane catching my feet and head all the time, tearing my ears and nose--especially when the man who walked in front of me let them go suddenly and they swung right in my face. Thorns dug big grooves into my legs, arms and hands. To make matters worse, the high fever seemed to exhaust me terribly. Worse luck, a huge boil, as big as an egg, developed under my left knee, while another of equal size appeared on my right ankle, already much swollen and aching. The huge shoes given me by the trader--of the cheapest manufacture--had already fallen to pieces. I had turned the soles of them into sandals, held up by numerous bits of string, which cut my toes and ankles very badly every time I knocked my feet against a tree or stone. My feet were full of thorns, so numerous that I had not the energy to remove them. The left leg was absolutely stiff with the big boil, and I could not bend it.
However, since Miss Brooke had become engaged in a conversation with Mr. Casaubon about the Vaudois clergy, Sir James betook himself to Celia, and talked to her about her sister; spoke of a house in town, and asked whether Miss Brooke disliked London. Away from her sister, Celia talked quite easily, and Sir James said to himself that the second Miss Brooke was certainly very agreeable as well as pretty, though not, as some people pretended, more clever and sensible than the elder sister. He felt that he had chosen the one who was in all respects the superior; and a man naturally likes to look forward to having the best. He would be the very Mawworm of bachelors who pretended not to expect it.
Which of us cannot look back in youth to the mysteries of the stickleback fisheries? Captains courageous, we sailed forth with bent pin and piece of thread, to woo the wily quarry with half an inch of chopped earthworm. For stickleback abound in every running stream and pond in England. They are beautiful little creatures, too, when you come to examine them, great favorites in the fresh-water aquarium; the male in particular is exquisitely colored, his hues growing brighter and his sheen more conspicuous at the pairing season. There are many species of sticklebacks--in England we have three very different kinds--but all are alike in one point which gives them their common name, that is to say, in their aggressive and protective prickliness. They are armed against all comers. The dorsal fin is partly replaced in the whole family by strong spines or "stickles," which differ in number in the different species. One of our English sorts is a lover of salt water: he lives in the sea, especially off the Cornish coast, and has fifteen stickles or spines; on which account he is commonly known as the Fifteen-spined Stickleback; our other two sorts belong to fresher waters, and are known as the Ten-spined and the Three-spined respectively.
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