So overpowering was it that towards 3 a.m.both Gerome and myself were attacked by severe vomiting, and recurrence was had to the medicine-chest and large doses of brandy.

One might have been sleeping over an open drain.

It was not till next day that I discovered the cause--rotten naphtha, which springs in large quantities from the ground all round the village.

Curiously enough, the smell is not observable in the daytime.
"We have done with the snow now, monsieur," said Gerome, as we rode next morning through a land of green barley and cotton plains, date palms, and mimosa.

On the other hand, we had come in for other annoyances, in the shape of heat, dust, and swarms of flies and mosquitoes.