Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 2 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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The Absence
Of The Mosquitos Is Purchased Dearly Enough By The Excessive Heat Of
The Stagnated Air, And The Smoke Of A Torch Of Copal, Which Lights The
Oven During Your Stay In It.
M. Bonpland, with courage and patience
well worthy of praise, dried hundreds of plants, shut up in these
hornitos of the Indians.
These precautions of the Indians sufficiently prove that,
notwithstanding the different organization of the epidermis, the
copper-coloured man, like the white man, suffers from the stings of
insects; but the former seems to feel less pain, and the sting is not
followed by those swellings which, during several weeks, heighten the
irritability of the skin, and throw persons of a delicate constitution
into that feverish state which always accompanies eruptive maladies.
Whites born in equinoctial America, and Europeans who have long
sojourned in the Missions, on the borders of forests and great rivers,
suffer much more than the Indians, but infinitely less than Europeans
newly arrived. It is not, therefore, as some travellers assert, the
thickness of the skin that renders the sting more or less painful at
the moment when it is received; nor is it owing to the particular
organization of the integuments, that in the Indians the sting is
followed by less of swelling and inflammatory symptoms; it is on the
nervous irritability of the epidermis that the acuteness and duration
of the pain depend. This irritability is augmented by very warm
clothing, by the use of alcoholic liquors, by the habit of scratching
the wounds, and lastly, (and this physiological observation is the
result of my own experience,) that of baths repeated at too short
intervals. In places where the absence of crocodiles permits people to
enter a river, M. Bonpland and myself observed that the immoderate use
of baths, while it moderated the pain of old stings of zancudos,
rendered us more sensible to new stings. By bathing more than twice a
day, the skin is brought into a state of nervous irritability, of
which no idea can be formed in Europe. It would seem as if all feeling
were carried toward the integuments.
As the mosquitos and gnats pass two-thirds of their lives in the
water, it is not surprising that these noxious insects become less
numerous in proportion as you recede from the banks of the great
rivers which intersect the forests. They seem to prefer the spots
where their metamorphosis took place, and where they go to deposit
their eggs. In fact the wild Indians (Indios monteros) experience the
greater difficulty in accustoming themselves to the life of the
missions, as they suffer in the Christian establishments a torment
which they scarcely know in their own inland dwellings. The natives at
Maypures, Atures, and Esmeralda, have been seen fleeing to the woods,
or, as they say, al monte, solely from the dread of mosquitos.
Unfortunately, all the Missions of the Orinoco have been established
too near the banks of the river. At Esmeralda the inhabitants assured
us that if the village were situated in one of the five plains
surrounding the high mountains of Duida and Maraguaca, they should
breathe freely, and enjoy some repose. The great cloud of mosquitos
(la nube de moscas) to use the expression of the monks, is suspended
only over the Orinoco and its tributary streams, and is dissipated in
proportion as you remove from the rivers. We should form a very
inaccurate idea of Guiana and Brazil, were we to judge of that great
forest four hundred leagues wide, lying between the sources of the
Madeira and the Lower Orinoco, from the valleys of the rivers by which
it is crossed.
I learned that the little insects of the family of the nemocerae
migrate from time to time like the alouate monkeys, which live in
society. In certain spots, at the commencement of the rainy season,
different species appear, the sting of which has not yet been felt. We
were informed at the Rio Magdalena, that at Simiti no other culex than
the jejen was formerly known; and it was then possible to enjoy a
tranquil night's rest, for the jejen is not a nocturnal insect. Since
the year 1801, the great blue-winged gnat (Culex cyanopterus) has
appeared in such numbers, that the poor inhabitants of Simiti know not
how to procure an undisturbed sleep. In the marshy channels (esteros)
of the isle of Baru, near Carthagena, is found a little white fly
called cafafi. It is scarcely visible to the naked eye, and causes
very painful swellings. The toldos or cottons used for
mosquito-curtains, are wetted to prevent the cafafi penetrating
through the interstices left by the crossing threads. This insect,
happily rare elsewhere, goes up in January, by the channel (dique) of
Mahates, as far as Morales. When we went to this village in the month
of May, we found there cimuliae and zancudos, but no jejens.
The insects most troublesome at Orinoco, or as the Creoles say, the
most ferocious (los mas feroces), are those of the great cataracts of
Esmeralda and Mandavaca. On the Rio Magdalena the Culex cyanopterus is
dreaded, particularly at Mompox, Chiloa, and Tamalameca. At these
places this insect is larger and stronger, and its legs blacker. It is
difficult to avoid smiling on hearing the missionaries dispute about
the size and voracity of the mosquitos at different parts of the same
river. In a region the inhabitants of which are ignorant of all that
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 mosquitos
(mias moscas) I can boast that with one of mine I would beat three of
yours."
This voracity of insects in certain spots, the fury with which they
attack man,* (* This voracity, this appetite for blood, seems
surprising in little insects, that live on vegetable juices, and in a
country almost entirely uninhabited.
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