

280 EFFECTS OF THE MOSQUTTO-STISe. 



ment where a European recently landed is exposed to the 

 attack of the nigua or chegoe (Pulex penetrans). This 

 animal, almost invisible to the eye, gets under the toe-nails, 

 and there acquires the size of a small pea, by the quick 

 increase of its eggs, which are placed in a bag under the 

 belly of the insect. The nigua therefore distinguishes what 

 the most delicate chemical analysis could not distinguish, 

 the cellular membrane and blood of a European from those 

 of a Creole white. The mosquitos, on the contrary, attack 

 equally the natives and the Europeans; but the effects of 

 the sting are different in the two races of men. The same 

 venomous liquid, deposited in the skin of a copper-coloured 

 man of Indian race, and in that of a white man newly 

 landed, causes no swelling in the former, while in the latter 

 it produces hard blisters, greatly inflamed, and painful for 

 several days; so different is the action on the epidermis, 

 according to the degree of irritability of the organs in 

 different races and different individuals ! 



I shall here recite several facts, which prove that the 

 Indians, and in general all the people of colour, at the 

 moment of being stung, suffer like the whites, although 

 perhaps with less intensity of pain. In the day-time, and 

 even when labouring at the oar, the natives, in order to 

 chase the insects, are continually giving one another smart 

 slaps with the palm of the hand. They even strike them- 

 selves and their comrades mechanically during their sleep. 

 The violence of their blows reminds one of the Persian tale 

 of the bear that tried to kill with his paw the insects on the 

 forehead of his sleeping master. Near Maypures we saw 

 some young Indians seated in a circle and rubbing cruelly 

 each others' backs with the bark of trees dried at the fire. 

 Indian women were occupied, with a degree of patience of 

 which the copper-coloured race alone are capable, in extract- 

 tracting, by means of a sharp bone, the little mass of coagu- 

 lated blood that forms the centre of every sting, and gives 

 the skin a speckled appearance. One of the most barbarous 

 nations of the Orinoco, that of the Ottomacs, is acquainted 

 with the use of mosquito-curtains (mosquiteros) woven 

 from the fibres of the moriche palm-tree. At Higuerote, 

 on the coast of Caracas, the copper-coloured people sleep 

 buried in the sand. In the villages of the Eio Magdalena 



