The Albany Knickerbocker thus describes the bedbugs to be met with on the Hudson river:
“The bedbugs during the summer season, which navigate the Hudson in some of our steamboats, are of such uncommon size, that they are some times mistaken for a kind of rats. The deck hands amuse themselves by shooting them with shovels, after chasing them about the deck. One of the largest we have heard of lately knawed asunder the night before last, the big tow line that fastened the tow boat Jemima Wilkinson to the deck, greatly endangering the lives of the crew.
Those described by the Knickerbocker, don’t begin with some we have heard of in this city. A young man tells us of a great conflict he had with a band of these midnight assassins, one night last summer. He had just succeeded in getting into a sound sleep, when he was suddenly aroused by a terrible picking at his body. After slaying a number of the enemy, he endeavored to make his escape, by retreat, when a large fat fellow, who appeared to be the General, rallied new recruits, and the young man was taken up bodily by his antagonists, who succeeded in carrying him to the stairs, where, through the help of abed-fellow, who had become alarmed at the confussion, the poor fellow, made his escape out the front door, and was seen running towards the Jersey City Ferry, like a maniac.—N. Y. Paper.
Jeffersonian Republican, Stroudsburg, PA, May 16, 1850