MUSQUITOS.

Persons who have not navigated the great rivers of equinoctial America, for instance, the Oroonoko 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 their 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 Oroonoko, in the villages placed on the banks of the river, surrounded by immense forests, the plaga de les 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 moschettoes.

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 the 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 recognize 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.

I have just shown, from my own observations, how much the geographical distribution of venomous insects varies in this labyrinth of rivers, with white and black waters.

It were to be wished, that a learned entomologist could study on the spot the specific differences of these noxious insects, which in the torrid zone, in spite of their littleness, act an important part in the economy of nature.

What appeared to us very remarkable, and is a fact, known to all the missionaries, is, that the different species do not associate together, and that at different hours of the day you are stung by a distinct species.

Every time that the scene changes, and to use the simple expression of the missionaries, other insects “mount guard,” you have a few minutes, often a quarter of an hour, of repose.

The insects that disappear have not their places instantly supplied in equal numbers by their successors.

From half after six in the morning till five in the afternoon, the air is filled with moschettoes; which have not, as we find related in some travels, the form of our gnats, but that of a small fly.

They are simuliums of the family nemoceræ of the system of Latreille.

Their sting is as painful as that of stomoxes.

It leaves a little reddish brown spot, which is extravasated and coagulated blood, where their proboscis has pierced the skin.

An hour before sun-set a species of small gnats, called tempraneros, because they appear also at sun-rise, take the place of the moschettoes.

Their presence scarcely lasts an hour and a half; they disappear between six and seven in the evening, or, as they say here, after the Angelus (a la oracion).

After a few minutes’ repose, you feel yourself stung by zancudoes another species of gnat (culex) with very long legs.

The zancudo, the proboscis of which contains a sharp pointed sucker, causes the most acute pain, and a swelling that remains several weeks.

Its hum resembles that of our gnats in Europe, but is louder and more prolonged.

The Indians pretend to distinguish “by their song the zancudoes and the tempraneroes; the latter of which are real twilight insects, while the zancudoes are most frequently nocturnal insects, and disappear towards sun-rise.

The culices of South America, have generally the wings, corselet, and legs of an azure colour, annulated, and variable from a mixture of spots of a metallic lustre.

Here, as in Europe, the males, which are distinguished by their feathered antennæ, are extremely rare; you are seldom stung except by females.

The preponderance of this sex explains the immense increase of the species, each female laying several hundred eggs.

In going up one of the great rivers of America, it is observed, that the appearance of a new species of culex denotes the approximity of a new stream flowing in.

The whites born in the torrid zone walk barefoot with impunity in the same apartment, where a European, recently landed, is exposed to the attack of the niguas or chegoes (pulex penetrans).

These animals almost invisible to the eye, get under the nails of the feet, and there acquire the size of a small pea by the quick increase of its eggs, which are placed in a bag under the belly of the insect.

The nigua, therefore, distinguishes, what the most delicate chemical analysis could not distinguish, the cellular membrane and blood of a European from those of a Creole white.

It is not so with the moschettoes.

In the day, even when labouring at the oar, the natives, in order to chase the insects, are continually giving one another smart slaps with the palm of the hand.

Rude in all their movements, they strike themselves and their comrades mechanically during their sleep.

The violence of their blows reminds us of the Persian tale of the bear, that tried to kill with his paw the insects on the forehead of his sleeping master.

Near Maypures we saw some young Indians seated in a circle and rubbing cruelly each others’ backs with the bark of trees dried at the fire.

Indian women were occupied with a degree of patience, of which the copper-coloured race alone are capable, in extirpating by means of a sharp bone the little mass of coagulated blood, that forms the centre of every sting, and gives the skin a speckled appearance.

One of the most barbarous nations of the Oroonoko, that of the Ottomacs, is acquainted with the use of moschetto curtains (mosquiteros) formed of a tissue of fibres of the palm tree, murichi.

We had lately seen, that at Higuerote, on the coast of Caraccas, the people of a copper-colour sleep buried in the sand.

In the villages of the Rio Magdalena the Indians often invited us to stretch ourselves with them on ox-skins, near the church, in the middle of the plaza grande, where they had assembled all the cows in the neighbourhood.

The proximity of cattle gives some repose to man.

The Indians of the Upper Oroonoko and the Cassiquiare, seeing that Mr.

Bonpland could not prepare his herbal, on account of the continual torment of the moschettoes, invited him to enter their ovens, (hornitos).

Thus they call little chambers, without doors or windows, into which they creep horizontally through a very small opening.

When they have driven away the insects by means of a fire of wet brush-wood, which emits a great deal of smoke, they close the opening of the oven.

The absence of moschettoes is purchased dearly enough by the excessive heat of stagnant air, and the smoke of a torch of copal, which lights the oven during your stay in it. Mr. Bonpland, with courage, and patience well worthy of praise, dried hundreds of plants, shut up in these hornitos of the Indians.

It is difficult not to smile at hearing the missionaries dispute on the size and voracity of the moschettoes at different parts of the same river.

In the centre of a country ignorant of what is passing in the rest of the world, this is the favourite subject of conversation.

“How I pity your situation!” said the missionary of the Raudales to the missionary of Cassiquiare, at our departure; “you are alone, like me, in this country of tigers and monkeys; with you fish is still more rare, and the heat more violent; but as for my flies, (mia moscas)

I can boast, that with one of mine I would beat three of yours.”

This voracity of insects in certain spots, the rage with which they attack man, the activity of the venom varying in the same species, are very remarkable facts; which find their analogy, however, in the classes of large animals.

The crocodile of Angostura pursues men, while at Nueva, Barcelona, in the Rio Neveri, you may bathe tranquilly in the midst of these carnivorous reptiles.

The jaguars of Maturin, Cumanacoa, and the isthmus of Panama, are cowardly in comparison to those of the Upper Oroonoko.

The Indians well know, that the monkeys of some valleys can easily be tamed, while others of the same species, caught elsewhere, will rather die of hunger, than submit to slavery.

I might have added the example of the scorpion of Camana, which it is very difficult to distinguish from that of the island of Trinidad, Jamaica, Carthagena, and Guayaquil; yet the former is not more to be feared than the scorpio europœus (of the south of France,) while the latter produces consequences far more alarming than the scorpio occitanus, (of Spain and Barbary.)

At Carthagena and Guayaquil, the sting of the scorpion (alaoran) instantly causes the loss of speech.

Sometimes a singular torpor of the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen hours.

The patient, when stung in the legs, stammers as if he had been struck with apoplexy.—Ibid.