The sea-breeze is the only palliative, and over the sixty parched miles that lay between us and the sea-shore it came sweeping up almost every afternoon that the summer lasted. Our house did not even boast the advantage of a cellar, and yet, in consequence of the dry atmosphere, the keeping of meat was less difficult than during hot weather in England; the grand obstacle, in fact, lying less in the heat than in the flies, of which it is impossible to exaggerate the annoyance. Often, unless we devoured our dinner with a Transatlantic haste, the state of our plates, even before our hunger was satisfied, was such as must be guessed rather than described; the principal dish also falling such an easy prey to our tormentors as to make the expression pièce de résistance a contradiction in terms.
Wire covers were much in vogue for protecting the eatables, but we soon gave them up as useless, finding that the flies passed under them with ease upon tables that were never level in a climate that warped all articles of wood, and we therefore preferred, whilst we sat at dinner, to keep the joint covered with a napkin, in which, the instant that we had finished our repast, it was rolled up bodily, as if in readiness for a pic-nic, the bundle being then tied closely in a thick sack, and suspended in the verandah for the night. Nor was meat by any means the only object attacked by the flies; even unskimmed milk was not always safe from them, and so much time was consumed in mere precautionary measures that there were days when a housekeeper felt almost in despair.
Ants, too, would perplex us, especially a tiny sort of
