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. "What would these animals eat, if we did not pass this way?" say the Creoles, in going through countries where there are only crocodiles covered with a scaly skin, and hairy monkeys.) 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 you may bathe tranquilly in the Rio Neveri amidst these carnivorous reptiles. The jaguars of Maturin, Cumanacoa, and the isthmus of Panama, are timid in comparison of those of the Upper Orinoco. The Indians well know that the monkeys of some valleys are easily 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 Cumana, 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 europaeus (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 (alacran) instantly causes the loss of speech. Sometimes a singular torpor of the tongue is observed for fifteen or sixteen hours.

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