MOSQUITOES 



in Labrador, but a mosquito must have crawled 

 under my door in the darkness, for in the morning 

 I could only open one eye, and the question that 

 greeted me at the breakfast table was, " Have you 

 bumped yourself?" The first summer is a sort of 

 inoculation time ; afterwards the bites do not sting 

 and itch so badly as the first ones did, and you do 

 not notice the attentions of the gnats nearly so much. 

 Some of the oldest residents seem quite hardened or 

 bite-proof, or perhaps they are too highly flavoured 

 with tobacco. This last holds good for the Eskimos : 

 they light their pipes and go about their work, 

 perhaps with a handkerchief over their necks, perhaps 

 without, while the mosquitoes buzz about and try to 



ge the smoke. 



I used to find a veil rather a trying and " head- 

 achey " thing, and spent a good deal of thought in an 

 attempt to devise some other method of protection, 

 but without much success. Measures which act 

 very well with the milder kind of flies are quite use- 

 less with our ravenous Labrador mosquitoes. 



One adventure that I had in my search for a 

 gnat-cure may be worth recording. It happened to 

 be church-cleaning time. The church was in the 

 hands of a bevy of muscular Christians in the form 

 of Eskimo women, and as the weather was fine the 

 missionary decided to hold service out of doors. 

 Would I give the people an address ? It was a 

 charming day towards the end of July, one of those 

 calm days when Labrador seems at its best ; but, as 

 is their habit on a warm day, the mosquitoes were 

 holding carnival. My listeners were all busy fly- 

 flapping; but a man who essays to deliver an 

 address cannot be all the time whisking gnats off 



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