Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/285

society, it is a fast and immoral place, without any chic or style. It is full of students, and no one is religious or honest in money matters; and I should never be surprised if fire were rained down upon it, as in a city of the Old Testament, for want of a just Brazilian. En revanche it is very healthy, and only one month's journey to England.

"I have had my first jigger since I wrote. A jigger is a little dirty insect like a white tick that gets into your foot, under your toe-nail if possible, burrows, and makes a large bag of eggs. It itches; and if you are wise, you send at once for a negress, and she picks it out with a common pin: if you do it yourself, you break its bag, and your foot festers. I knew nothing about it, and left it for eight days, and found I could not walk for a little black lump in my foot, which spurted fluid like ink when I touched it. At last my nigger asked me to let him look at it, and he got a sharp pair of scissors and took it out. It was like a white bag this size O, with a black head, and it left quite a hole in my foot. You cannot walk about here without your shoes, and they must be full of camphor, or the jiggers get into your feet, and people have their nails taken off to extract them, and sometimes their toes and feet cut off."

"São Paulo, January 3, 1866.

"I have had twelve hard days' work, from six in the morning till late at night, with Kier and my black boy. We have had to unpack fifty-nine pieces of baggage, wash the dirty trunks and stow them away, sort, dry,