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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These Rivers, Like The
Orinoco, Cross Thick Forests, But The Tipulary Insects, As Well As The
Crocodiles, Shun The Proximity Of The Black Waters.
Possibly these
waters, which are a little colder, and chemically different from the
white waters, are adverse to the larvae of tipulary insects and gnats,
which may be considered as real aquatic animals.
Some small rivers,
the colour of which is deep blue, or yellowish-brown (as the Toparo,
the Mataveni, and the Zama), are exceptions to the almost general rule
of the absence of mosquitos over the black waters. These three rivers
swarm with them; and the Indians themselves fixed our attention on the
problematic causes of this phenomenon. In going down the Rio Negro, we
breathed freely at Maroa, Daripe, and San Carlos, villages situated on
the boundaries of Brazil. But this improvement of our situation was of
short continuance; our sufferings recommenced as soon as we entered
the Cassiquiare. At Esmeralda, at the eastern extremity of the Upper
Orinoco, where ends the known world of the Spaniards, the clouds of
mosquitos are almost as thick as at the Great Cataracts. At Mandavaca
we found an old missionary, who told us with an air of sadness, that
he had had his twenty years of mosquitos in America*. (* "Yo tengo mis
veinte anos de mosquitos.") He desired us to look at his legs, that we
might be able to tell one day, beyond sea (por alla), 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 genus Simulium abound in the
Cassiquiare, which has white waters, the culices or zancudos are so
much the more rare; you scarcely find any there; while on the rivers
of black waters, in the Atabapo and the Rio, there are generally some
zancudos and no mosquitos.
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 minute
size, act an important point in the economy of nature. (* The mosquito
bovo or tenbiguai; the melero, which always settles upon the eyes; the
tempranero, or putchiki; the jejen; the gnat rivau, the great zancudo,
or matchaki; the cafafi, etc.) 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 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.
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