Any one who has not lived in a tropical country can have very little conception of the discomfort and worry of these little maddening tormentors. Yet there are others whose attacks produce more serious consequences, and an illustration was afforded this evening. “Kate Tevano” (Arthur’s wife) was coming across to my house, and when almost at my door she gave a scream of terror and retired at once back again. I rushed out to learn the cause, and found she had been bitten by a centipede in the toe. The blood was just oozing out, and there were the distinct marks of his two fangs. In about ten minutes she was in great agony, and in the course of the evening her foot swelled and the pain was most terrible, and she couldn’t bear anything near it. Poor child, I left her in floods of bitter tears before going to bed, and she expected to be in pain all night long. The natives have some antidote for it, and the women were applying that all the evening. I confess that I did not know myself what to do, except to bathe it with hot water. There was a great hunt for the venomous little reptile, but of course he had made himself scarce. How he got on her foot, and why he bit her, no one knows, but there are multitudes of the creatures here, and perhaps the mystery is that people are not more often bitten. They have scorpions too here whose bite is very venomous, but one doesn’t often hear of their biting. There is a very large ant here called the ‘gandee’ to which I have a great aversion, and its bite is very sharp. Snakes here are not venomous, but the people have an instinctive dread of them, but they do not trouble us much. There is a hideous creature which lives in the thatch of the houses, an ugly toad-like lizard, with large red prominent eyes, which has such a tenacity of grasp with its feet that it sometimes even sticks so tight to the person it attacks as to take away the very skin in its grasp. Indeed, to me there are many strange and uncanny creatures in these islands to which I give as wide a berth as possible. Even in putting on your clothes you may find that a scorpion or centipede have taken up their quarters, in your hat you may find another monster, while most likely your shoes will be the tenement of some hideous reptile. Use and experience cannot rid one of a shudder when one thinks what may be, and yet if one is always anticipating these evils one’s very life becomes a burden.