"Thank Heaven!" I involuntarily exclaimed, drawing my cloak closer about me, although the heat was killing; "we shall after that escape in some sort, I hope, from these legions of musquitoes?" "I guess not quite," replied the man; "they are as thick, if not thicker, in the Long Swamp." "The Long Swamp!" I repeated: "what a horrible name for a country! Does the canal run far through it?" "No, not so very far, only about eighty miles." "We've then done with swamps, I hope, my friend?" I inquired, as he kept puffing and slapping on with unwearied constancy. "Why, yes, there's not a heap more swamp, that is to say, not close to the line, till we come to within about forty miles of Utica." "And is that one as much infested with these infernal insects as are the Cedar and Long Swamps." "I guess _that_ is _the_ place above all for musquitoes," replied the man grinning. "Thim's the real gallinippers, emigrating north for the summer all the way from the Balize and Red River. Let a man go to sleep with his head in a cast-iron kettle among thim chaps, and if their bills don't make a watering-pot of it before morning, I'm d----d. They're strong enough to lift the boat out of the canal, if they could only get underneath her." I found these swamps endless as Banquo's line: would they had been shadows only; but alas! they were yet to be encountered, horrible realities not to be evaded. I closed my eyes in absolute fear, and forbore further inquiry. Here I remained throughout the whole night, dozing a little between whiles, but never foregoing my cigar for a minute. Towards daylight the dew descended like rain, but brought with it no coolness to earth or man: it felt exactly as though it had been boiled the day before, and had not been left long enough to get cool. During this day many of our men frequently threw themselves overboard, clothes and all on, that is, in shirt and trousers, these being all of habiliment that could be worn; I really feared that some of them who had been a little too free in their cold applications, that is, of iced water and brandy, would have gone mad. This blessing of ice we were seldom many hours without, the poorest hovel on the canal being commonly provided with it in sufficient abundance to give us a supply. The inhabitants, I found, were suffering from the unusual continuance of heat as much as strangers: at night they built huge fires of pine before their doors, so that the thick smoke might penetrate the dwelling, and scour the infernal musquitoes out of it. At these fires we would find the poor women sitting in the smoke at the risk of suffocation; pale, haggard, with their hair neglected and dishevelled, looking like worn-out ghosts rather than living beings. The oldest inhabitants on the line of the canal assured us they never remembered any heat of three days' continuance which could compare to this; and I believe them, since no man could long endure such a visitation.