Indian, and which makes a white man so nervous and uncomfortable and

savage that he wants to exterminate the whole tribe.

These people about us had other peculiarities, which I have noticed in

the noble red man, too: they were infested with vermin, and the dirt had

caked on them till it amounted to bark.

The little children were in a pitiable condition--they all had sore eyes,

and were otherwise afflicted in various ways. They say that hardly a

native child in all the East is free from sore eyes, and that thousands

of them go blind of one eye or both every year. I think this must be so,

for I see plenty of blind people every day, and I do not remember seeing

any children that hadn't sore eyes. And, would you suppose that an

American mother could sit for an hour, with her child in her arms, and

let a hundred flies roost upon its eyes all that time undisturbed? I see

that every day. It makes my flesh creep. Yesterday we met a woman

riding on a little jackass, and she had a little child in her arms

--honestly, I thought the child had goggles on as we approached, and I

wondered how its mother could afford so much style. But when we drew

near, we saw that the goggles were nothing but a camp meeting of flies

assembled around each of the child's eyes, and at the same time there was

a detachment prospecting its nose. The flies were happy, the child was

contented, and so the mother did not interfere.

As soon as the tribe found out that we had a doctor in our party, they

began to flock in from all quarters. Dr. B., in the charity of his

536

The Innocents Abroad