MOSCHETTOES (MUSQUETOES) OF S.

AMERICA.

From Humboldt's Personal Narrative.

"Persons who have not navigated the great rivers of equinoctial America, for instance the Oronoko and the Rio Magdalena, can scarcely conceive how, without interruption, at every instant of life, you may be tormented by insects flying in the air, and how the multitude of these little animals may render vast regions wholly uninhabitable.

However accustomed you may be to endure pain without complaint; however lively an interest you may take in the objects of your researches, it is impossible not to be constantly disturbed by the moschettoes, zancudoes, jejens, and tempraneroes, that cover the face and hands, pierce the clothes with the long sucker, in the form of a needle, and, getting into the mouth and nostrils, set you coughing and sneezing whenever you attempt to speak in the open air.

In the missions of the Oronoko, in the villages placed on the banks of the river, surrounded by immense forests, the plaga de las moscas, the plague of the flies, affords an inexhaustible subject of conversation.

When two persons meet in the morning, the first questions they address to each other are, 'How did you find the zancudoes during the night?

How are we to-day for the moschettoes?' These questions remind us of a Chinese form of politeness, which indicates the ancient state of the country where it took birth.

Salutations were made heretofore in the celestial empire, in the following words, vou-tou-hou.

'Have you been incommoded in the night by the serpents?' We shall soon see that on the banks of the Tuamini, in the river Magdalena, and still more at Choco, the country of gold and platina, the Chinese compliment on the serpents might be added to that of the meschettoes."

"At Mandavaca we found an old Missionary, who told us, with an air of sadness, that he had spent his twenty years of moschettoes in America. He desired us to look well at his legs, that we might be able to tell one day 'poor alla (beyond sea) what the poor monks suffer in the forests of Cassiquiare.' Every sting leaving a small darkish brown point, his legs were so speckled that it was difficult to recognise the whiteness of his skin through the spots of coagulated blood.

If the insects of the simulium genus abound in the Cassiquiare, which has white waters, the culices, or zancudoes, are so much the more rare; you scarcely find any there, while on the rivers of black waters, in the Atabapo and the Rio Negro, there are generally some zancudoes and no moschettoes."