158 I N A G U A 



provided breeding places for them and after dark they came 

 to Hfe in the countless thousands. I have spent evenings in the 

 Jersey sw^amps and in the cypress marshes of southern Georgia 

 where the numbers of these insects have produced a sound like 

 that of a dozen droning airplanes, but never had I encountered 

 anything like the myriads that came upon me that night in the 

 spoonbill swamp. 



I had to do something and do it quickly. The pain of the 

 accumulated bites was beginning to drive me frantic; the hum- 

 ming was worse; my ear drums vibrated noisily to the high- 

 pitched din. There is no sound more nerve-destroying than the 

 hum of mosquitoes. I came nearer to panic than I have ever in 

 all my life. Only by grim determination did I fail to give way 

 to temptation and throw away the heavy pack and run as fast 

 as my legs could carry me to the coast. There was nothing to 

 do but retrace my steps and do it carefully lest in the dark I 

 take a wrong passage and walk up a blind waterway. Doggedly 

 I plunged through the mud, trying not to slap the mosquitoes. 

 Fighting them only served to set them buzzing more wildly 

 than ever and excited my already overwrought nerves. Minute 

 after minute I slugged through the tepid water, falling into 

 holes and tripping on buried sticks, rising and falling again and 

 again. By concentration I tried to obliviate the sensation of pain 

 and soreness that was stealing through every fiber. Vaguely I 

 recalled reading of the Hindu ascetics who rendered them- 

 selves insensible to suffering by focusing their attention on 

 beautiful thoughts or abstruse philosophical themes. Resolutely 

 I set my mind on a familiar poem, repeating it aloud as I strug- 

 gled through the dark. It was the strangely mournful and stately 

 "Thanatopsis." 



To him njoho in the love of Nature hold comjnunion with her 

 visible forms, my voice echoed wearily through the mangrove 

 trees, she speaks a various language; for his gayer hours she has a 



