“Well, he don’t know what the parts are like where he’s going. Do you know what fevers is?”
“Oh, yes,” I replied; “I’ve heard of them often.”
“Well, the coast yonder’s where they’re made, my lad. Natur’s got a big workshop all along there, and she makes yaller ones, and black ones; scarlet, too, I dessay, though I never see none there that colour.”
“Uncle’s a doctor,” I said, “and he’ll know all about that.”
“But he’s going, he tells me, to shoot birds in the forests and up the rivers, and means to skin ’em, and he won’t do it.”
“Why not?” I said.
“Why not? Because if the fevers don’t stop you both, the Injuns will; and if they don’t, you’ll get your boat capsized in the rivers or along the coast, or you’ll get lost in the woods and never be heerd of again.”
“Uncle’s an old, experienced traveller,” I said, “and has been a great deal in South America.”
“You warn’t with him there, was you?”
“No,” I said; “but I was with him in the East Indian Islands.”