Indeed, a few cases of snake-bites and fever, as well as an occasional accident, yielded all the professional work which fell to my lot; I felt, in fact, almost ashamed to accept my pay, but it was so generously pressed upon me every month by the paymaster that I had not the courage to refuse it for fear of giving offence; and my conscience was, after all, somewhat quieted by the recollection of all I had to endure in the shape of climatic hardship and personal inconvenience from every kind of tormentor, insect and reptile, which in this place converged to a focus. Crows and kites found it a most agreeable _rendezvous_; they swarmed around from “rosy morn to dewy eve,” the former eternally jabbering and quarrelling over the remains of defunct animal life and the _débris_ of many a repast. Impudent, arrant thieves as they were, not unfrequently advancing boldly inside the barracks and other dwellings, we should have suffered without such admirable scavengers, insatiable, and endowed with singular intelligence, cunning, and general aptitude for the position assigned to them by nature. Pariah-dogs would also steal into the place by some mysterious path, also useful scavengers, but rewarded, I fear, with more kicks than caresses. In Burmah, as in India, they are only half domesticated, showing the same aptitude for education as elsewhere. They are as omnivorous as the jackal; nothing comes amiss to them, animal or vegetable, dead or alive. The jackal is, if I remember aright, not met with on the Burmah side of the Arracan hills. It may be the country is distasteful to them from the luxuriance of its vegetation; anyhow, their absence is a blessing to mankind, were it only on account of the manner in which they make night hideous with their weird cries, to say nothing of their predatory proclivities and offensive smell. Another matter of vital importance to all desirous of enjoying a good night’s rest—upon which more depends in the tropics, where the excessive heat so thoroughly exhausts the whole system, than at home—was, as I soon had occasion to learn, constant attention to the entirety of one’s mosquito-curtains, ever so small a hole being fatal to one’s repose. These blood-sucking savages were greatly in evidence at Pegu—as where in the East are they not?—and of a fine, vigorous breed, gifted with healthy appetites, and evincing a decided preference for white flesh, wherein they resemble their pelagic prototype, the shark. Most to be dreaded was the speckled variety, which, besides being more active and persevering, buzzed more loudly, and secreted a more irritating poison; a brace of them under the same canopy were not to be brought to book except after a long and tedious chase, involving a deal of tongue-banging and the employment of expressive adjectives, for which it is to be hoped every allowance will be made here and hereafter.