306 THE LOWEE AMAZONS. CHAr. YIL 



and surly answers to our questions, and so were glad 

 to depart. 



We crossed the river at this point, and entered a 

 narrow channel which penetrates the interior of the 

 island of Tupinambarana, and leads to a chain of lakes 

 called the Lagos de Cararaucu. A furious current swept 

 along the coast, eating into the crumbling earthy banks, 

 and strewing the river with debris of the forest. The 

 mouth of the channel lies about twenty-five miles from 

 Villa Nova ; the entrance is only about forty yards 

 broad, but it expands, a short distance inland, into a 

 large sheet of water. We suffered terribly from insect 

 pests during the twenty-four hours we remained here. 

 At night it was quite impossible to sleep for mosquitos ; 

 they fell upon us by myriads, and without much piping 

 came straight at our faces as thick as raindrops in a 

 shower. The men crowded into the cabins, and then tried 

 to expel the pests by the smoke from burnt rags, but 

 it was of little avail, although we were half suffocated 

 during the operation. In the daytime the Motuca, a 

 much larger and more formidable fly than the mosquito, 

 insisted upon levying his tax of blood. We had been 

 tormented by it for many days past, but this place 

 seemed to be its metropolis. The species has been 

 described by Perty, the author of the Entomological 

 portion of Spix and Martins' travels, under the name of 

 Hadaus lepidotus. It is a member of the Tabanida? 

 family, and indeed is closely related to the Hgematopota 

 pluvialis, a brown fly which haunts the borders of woods 

 in summer time in England. The Motuca is of a 

 bronzed-black colour ; its proboscis is formed of a bundle 



