Note 26 — Chapter VI

"Sir Sidney Smith informed the author (Dr. Clarke) that one night, preferring a bed upon the sand of the desert to a night's lodging in the village of Etko, as thinking he should be more secure from vermin, he found himself, in the morning, entirely covered by them. Lice and scorpions abound in all the sandy desert near Alexandria." One of my comrades informed me, that when some of the date trees were split at Aboukir, for making the hospital, there were so many lice in the hearts of them that they might have been gathered in handfuls. The frogs also were so abundant at some of the places where the army halted between Rosetta and Cairo, that it was not possible to get at the water in the river without treading upon them; and at one place the camp ground was literally covered with black beetles, to the no small annoyance of the soldiers in the tents, and the bed frames and mats that we got new in the hospital in Rosetta in the end of June, were so full of bugs by the end of September, that they were fit only to be burnt.