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
Vegetation Of Its Banks Became More And More Uniform.
During several
days, and particularly since we had left the Mission of Arichuna, we
had suffered cruelly from the stings of insects, which covered our
faces and hands.
They were not mosquitos, which have the appearance of
little flies, or of the genus Simulium, but zancudos, which are really
gnats, though very different from our European species.* (* M.
Latreille has discovered that the mosquitos of South Carolina are of
the genus Simulium (Atractocera meigen.) These insects appear only
after sunset. Their proboscis is so long that, when they fix on the
lower surface of a hammock, they pierce through it and the thickest
garments with their sting.
We had intended to pass the night at the Vuelta del Palmito, but the
number of jaguars at that part of the Apure is so great, that our
Indians found two hidden behind the trunk of a locust-tree, at the
moment when they were going to sling our hammocks. We were advised to
re-embark, and take our station in the island of Apurito, near its
junction with the Orinoco. That portion of the island belongs to the
province of Caracas, while the right banks of the Apure and the
Orinoco form a part, the one of the province of Varinas, the other of
Spanish Guiana. We found no trees to which we could suspend our
hammocks, and were obliged to sleep on ox-hides spread on the ground.
The boats were too narrow and too full of zancudos to permit us to
pass the night in them.
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