228 THE SCOURGE OF HIGH LATITUDES. 



Lapmark, where I had been fishing, the man who was 

 rowing me was so pestered by these insects, as to be almost 

 beside himself. For a while he resorted to various ex- 

 pedients to rid himself of the enemy ; but his patience 

 becoming at length fairly exhausted, he suddenly dropped 

 the oars, and throwing himself over the side of the boat, 

 clothed as he was, plunged headlong into the water ! This 

 device, which afforded me much amusement, if it did not 

 altogether relieve the poor fellow from his tormentors, tended 

 at least to cool his blood, and to give him a temporary respite 

 from pain. 



But though the Scandinavian mosquito is a sore pest to 

 man as well as beast, it would seem, from the accounts of 

 travellers, that his compeer in the American wild is a still 

 greater scourge. Poor Captain Franklin, when speaking of 

 this insect, very eloquently says : " The food of the mosquito 

 is blood, which it can extract by penetrating the hide of a 

 buffalo ; and if it is not disturbed, it gorges itself so as to 

 swell its body into a transparent globe. The wound does 

 not swell like that of the African mosquito ; but it is infi- 

 nitely more painful, and when multiplied a hundredfold, 

 and continued for so many successive days, it becomes an 

 evil of such magnitude, that cold, famine, and every other 

 concomitant of an inhospitable climate, must yield the pre- 

 eminence to it. It chases the buffalo to the plain, irritating 

 him to madness, and the rein-deer to the sea-shore, from 

 which they do not return until the scourge has ceased." 



My first introduction to a herd of rein-deer was in Tornea 

 Lapmark. The tinkling of a number of bells, followed by a 

 clattering of hoofs, first reached our ears, and a few minutes 

 afterwards we were surrounded by five to six hundred of 



