206 PLAGUE OF THTC MOSQtlTOS. 



no swelling in either; and scarcely ever produces those 

 little pustules which occasion such smarting and itching 

 to Europeans recently arrived. But the native and the 

 "White suffer equally from the sting, till the insect has with- 

 drawn its sucker from the skin. After a thousand useless 

 essays, M. Bonpland and myself tried the expedient of 

 rubbing our hands and arms with the fat of the crocodile, 

 and the oil of turtle-eggs, but we never felt the least 

 relief, and were stung as before. I know that the Lap- 

 landers boast of oil and fat as the most useful preservatives ; 

 but the insects of Scandinavia are not of the same species 

 as those of the Orinoco. The smoke of tobacco drives 

 away our gnats, while it is employed in vain against the 

 zancudos. If the application of fat and astringent* sub- 

 stances preserved the inhabitants of these countries from 

 the torment of insects, as Father Grumilla alleges, why has 

 not the custom of painting the skin become general on these 

 shores? Why do so many naked natives paint only the 

 face, though living in the neighbourhood of those who 

 paint the whole bodypf 



We are struck with the observation, that the Indians of 

 the Orinoco, like the natives of North America, prefer the 

 substances that yield a red colour to every other. Is this 

 predilection founded on the facility with which the savage 

 procures ochreous earths, or the colouring fecula of anato 

 and of chica ? I doubt this much. Indigo grows wild in a 

 great part of equinoctial America. This plant, like so many 

 other leguminous plants, would have furnished the natives 

 abundantly with pigments to colour themselves blue like the 

 ancient Britons.lt Yet we see no American tribe painted 

 with indigo. It appears to me probable, as I have already 

 hinted above, that the preference given by the Americans 

 to the red colour is generally founded on the tendency 

 which nations feel to attribute the idea of beauty to what- 

 ever characterises their national physiognomy. Men whose 

 skin is naturally of a brownish red, love a red colour. If 



* The pulp of the anato, and even the chica, are astringent and 

 slightly purgative. 



t The Caribs, the Salives, the Tamanacs, and the Maypures. 



J The half-clad nations of the temperate zone often paint their skin ol 

 the same colour us that with which their clothes are dyed. 



