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 Towns Of
Angostura, Nueva Barcelona, And Mompox, Where From The Want Of Police,
The Streets, The Great Squares, And The Interior Of Court-Yards Are
Overgrown With Brushwood, Are Sadly Celebrated For The Abundance Of
Zancudos.
People born in the country, whether whites, mulattoes, negroes, or
Indians, all suffer from the sting of these insects.
But as cold does
not render the north of Europe uninhabitable, so the mosquitos do not
prevent men from dwelling in the countries where they abound, provided
that, by their situation and government, they afford resources for
agriculture and industry. The inhabitants pass their lives in
complaining of the insufferable torment of the mosquitos, yet,
notwithstanding these continual complaints, they seek, and even with a
sort of predilection, the commercial towns of Mompox, Santa Marta, and
Rio de la Hacha. Such is the force of habit in evils which we suffer
every hour of the day, that the three missions of San Borja, Atures,
and Esmeralda, where, to make use of an hyperbolical expression of the
monks, there are more mosquitos than air,* (* Mas moscas que aire.)
would no doubt become flourishing towns, if the Orinoco afforded
planters the same advantages for the exchange of produce, as the Ohio
and the Lower Mississippi.
It is a curious fact, that the whites born in the torrid zone may walk
barefoot with impunity, in the same apartment where a European
recently landed is exposed to the attack of the nigua or chegoe (Pulex
penetrans). This animal, almost invisible to the eye, gets under the
toe-nails, and there acquires 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.
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