"She Is Leaking Worse Than Ever Forward, Sir, And There Is A Foot Of
Water In The Hold," Was Our First Salutation On The Morning Of The
20th.
But we have become accustomed to these things now; the cabin-
floor is always wet, and one is obliged
To mop up the water many
times a day, giving some countenance to the native idea that
Englishmen live in or on the water, and have no houses but ships.
The cabin is now a favourite breeding-place for mosquitoes, and we
have to support both the ship-bred and shore-bred bloodsuckers, of
which several species show us their irritating attentions. A large
brown sort, called by the Portuguese mansos (tame), flies straight to
its victim, and goes to work at once, as though it were an invited
guest. Some of the small kinds carry uncommonly sharp lancets, and
very potent poison. "What would these insects eat, if we did not
pass this way?" becomes a natural question.
The juices of plants, and decaying vegetable matter in the mud,
probably form the natural food of mosquitoes, and blood is not
necessary for their existence. They appear so commonly at malarious
spots, that their presence may be taken as a hint to man to be off to
more healthy localities. None appear on the high lands. On the low
lands they swarm in myriads. The females alone are furnished with
the biting apparatus, and their number appears to be out of all
proportion in excess of the males.
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