ABSTRACT

July 12th.—Three wet days in succession, with scarcely abreath of wind to vary the sound of the ever-dropping rain. Unable to go out. One of the people caught a “ground-pig” or “cassada rat,” so called from its eating the manioc-roots. It is a formidable-looking grey animal, about four times as large as the common black water-rat of Britain, which it perfectly resembles in shape. It is said that once upon a time, a commissariat officer here, in despair at the annual havoc committed in the Government stores by a colony of these animals, actually transmitted with his accounts to the Treasury a stuffed cassada rat, with a piece of paper marked “Voucher No. 3” significantly pinned upon it.