INTO BUZEE COUNTRY IJ7

have allowed his first wife to starve, came with his
ferrets; they scrambled along the thatch, rearing at
the chimney stack like tiny polar bears; one of them
couldn't keep his footing and continually fell off until
he had to be put back in the bag. There weren't any
rats, the catcher said, and refused payment. He had
a pride in his profession and would only be paid by
results, at the rate of a shilling a rat. But that night
there was a knock on the door. A village woman
stood in the door and held out a dead rat, jumping
with fleas. She said, "I thought maybe you might
like to see a rat. We've caught twenty down the
hedge," dangling the body under my lamp.

It is not, after all, unreasonable to fear a rat. The
fear of moths, of birds and bats—this may be nerves;
but the fear of the rat is rational. To quote Mr, Hans
Zinsser, "It carries diseases of man and animals—
plague, typhus, trichinella spiralis, rat-bite fever,
infectious jaundice, possibly trench fever, probably
foot-and-mouth disease and a form of equine
'influenza'. . . . They have nibbled at the ears and
noses of infants in their cribs; starving rats once
devoured a man who entered a disused coal-mine."
It wasn't in the least comforting to remember that
there are forty million rats in England; the thought
of the one rat which the sister at Bolahun had found
sniffing at her hair was enough to hinder sleep.

And lying awake and hearing the rats play among
our boxes, I couldn't help remembering, too, the list
of diseases I had read in England: leprosy, yaws,
smallpox. . . . They were all, I felt certain, to be
found in Duogobmai, and it was no comfort to know
that leprosy was hardly at all contagious and that-