September 30, 1854._
My dear Mother,--I last wrote to you from Malacca in July. I have now
just returned to Singapore after two months' hard work. At Malacca I had
a pretty strong touch of fever with the old Rio Negro symptoms, but the
Government doctor made me take a great quantity of quinine every day for
a week together and so killed it, and in less than a fortnight I was
quite well and off to the jungle again. I see now how to treat the
fever, and shall commence at once when the symptoms again appear. I
never took half enough quinine in America to cure me. Malacca is a
pretty place, and I worked very hard. Insects are not very abundant
there, still by perseverance I got a good number and many rare ones. Of
birds, too, I made a good collection. I went to the celebrated Mount
Ophir and ascended to the top. The walk was terrible--thirty miles
through jungle, a succession of mud holes. My boots did good service. We
lived there a week at the foot of the mountain, in a little hut built
by our men, and I got some fine new butterflies there and hundreds of
other new and rare insects.
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