'
"But to our journey. The horses floundered through quagmires covered
in some places with logs, which toss and tumble you till every bone
aches, floundered and swam through streams reeking with scum from
the cypress swamps; the roads are about six inches wider than your
carriage, and the professor found himself obliged to avoid the sharp
corners of fences, on either side the deep ditches on whose very edge
ran the wheels; to urge his horses over stumps and fallen trees; to
whip them over long snouts of prostrate pigs who refused to budge an
inch; to jump them over chasms running dark and deep across his path
and to spur them down sharp, perpendicular pitches which threatened to
break every bone in his body.
"Here and there we saw a few logs piled up together, flanked by mud
and sticks, and dignified by the name of house; the naked piccaninnies
rolled in the dust, and the poor-white scowled as he lifted his hat,
while we worried our miserable way along.
"Now, by the departure of our friend to look after his business, the
doctor and the professor were thrown upon their own resources for
enjoyment. After shooting at the wild pigs for a while, finding there
was great danger of their being melted down into their boots, they
threw off their clothes, and regardless of moccasins, regardless of
spiders and the whole race of poisonous vermin, they plunged to their
necks into the ditch by the roadside.
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