Now we travel with cot-beds which roll up and slip into heavy canvas bags, and take up very little room on the pack. These blessings keep us off the dirty floors, which are usually much too hot for health, unless, indeed, one has come in wet, cold, and aching from a long tramp, when they are a specific preventive of colds and rheumatism. On that first journey, however, we had nothing of this sort, but we sent out for some bundles of fresh clean straw used for thatch--one thing, at least, of which there is plenty in every village--and piled them at least a foot high. We spread thereon our bed, to the confusion and defeat of our little enemies, ploughing their weary way uselessly through the mazes of that straw all night. In this way we slept peacefully, except when the floor became intolerably hot, and our bed correspondingly so, then we rose, piled our straw in another place, remade our couch, and composed ourselves again to slumber. We never did this more than three times in one night, and it was a mere diversion. The situation, however, develops into something quite beyond a joke, as was hinted in a former chapter, when one is forced to travel in hot weather. The rice and beans for men and animals must be cooked, which means--in nine cases out of ten--that a fire must be built under your room, and you must sleep on the stove, although the thermometer is already in the seventies before it is kindled. The room, you remember, is small and low, the windows opening to the court probably few. You look longingly at the open porch or _maru_, but there are leopards and tigers that prowl at night, or wanting these, no lack of rats, ferrets, and snakes; there are foul smells and rank poisonous vapors, pools of green water and sewage all about, a famous place in the damp night air to soak a system full of malaria, more deadly than wild beasts; so with a sigh you turn again to your oven, prepared for the worst. Up, up, steadily climbs the thermometer, your pulses throb, your head snaps, you gasp and pant for breath, and at length toward morning, when the fire is dead, and the hot stones a little cooled, you fall into an exhausted feverish sleep. But an early start is necessary to make the next stage, and by four o’clock at least a new fire is built to cook more rice, and you rush out of doors, to draw a whiff of pure air and cool your burning temples.