272 PLAGUE OP MOBQTJITOB. 



it should be remembered that almost all matters of populai 

 belief, even those most absurd in appearance, rest on real 

 facts, but facts ill observed. In treating them with disdain, 

 the traces of a discovery may often be lost, in natural philo- 

 sophy as well as in zoology. We will not then admit, with 

 a Spanish author, that the fable of the ' man of the woods ' 

 was invented by the artifice of Indian women, who pre- 

 tended to have been carried off, when they had been long 

 absent unknown to their husbands. Travellers who may 

 hereafter visit the missions of the Orinoco will do well to 

 follow up our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the 

 woods ; and examine whether it be some unknown species 

 of bear, or some very rare monkey analogous to the Siinia 

 chiropotes, or Simia satanas, which may have given rise to 

 such singular tales. 



After having spent two days near the cataract of Atures, 

 we were not sorry when our boat was reladen, and we were 

 enabled to leave a spot where the temperature of the air 

 is generally by day twenty-nine degrees, and by night 

 twenty-six degrees, of the centigrade thermometer. This 

 temperature seemed to us to be still much more elevated, 

 from the feeling of heat which we experienced. The want 

 of concordance between the instruments and the sensations 

 must be attributed to the continual irritation of the skin 

 excited by the mosquitos. An atmosphere filled with veno- 

 mous insects always appears to be more heated than it is 

 in reality. We were horribly tormented in the day by 

 mosquitos and the jejen, a small venomous fly (simulium), 

 and at night by the zancudos, a large species of gnat, 

 dreaded even by the natives. Our hands began to swell 

 considerably, and this swelling increased daily till our arrival 

 on the banks of the Temi. The means that are employed 

 to escape from these little plagues are very extraordinary. 

 The good missionary Bernardo Zea, who passed his life 

 tormented by mosquitos, had constructed near the church, 

 on a scaffolding of trunks of palm-trees, a small apartment, 

 in which we breathed more freely. To this we went up in 

 the evening, by means of a ladder, to dry our plants and 

 write our journal. The missionary had justly observed, 

 that the insects abounded more particularly in the lowest 

 strata of the atmosphere, that which reaches from the 



