MOSQUITOES IN ARKANSAS. 283 



as an alligator. They can't hurt my feelings, for they 

 lay under the skin ; and I never knew but one case of 

 injury resulting from them, and that was to a Yankee : 

 and they take worse to foreigners, anyhow, than they 

 do to natives. But the way they used that fellow up ! 

 First they punched him until he swelled up and busted; 

 then he sup-per-a-ted — as the doctor called it — until he 

 was as raw as beef; then, owing to the warm weather, 

 he tuck the ager^ and finally he tuck a steamboat and 

 left the country. He w^as the only man that ever tuck 

 mosquitoes at heart that I know'd of. But mosquitoes is 

 natur', and I never find fault with her. If they ar' large, 

 Arkansaw is large, her varmints ar' large, her trees ar' 

 large, her rivers ar' large, and a small mosquito would 

 be of no more use in Arkansaw than preaching in a cane- 

 brake." ' 



This is the only knock-down argument in favour of 

 mosquitoes that I can recollect ; but I remember when I 

 first went to Texas, that they feasted upon me and nearly 

 drove me mad ; and yet, when I had been in the country 

 a couple of years, I could sit in a bunch of rushes — 

 myself and my very gun-barrels covered with them — 

 and not feel any serious annoyance from their attacks, 

 except when one would make a feint at my eye, just 

 when I w^as pulling the trigger at a blue-w-inged teal, 

 going by a point of rushes perhaps sixty 3^ards off, like 

 a streak of greased lightning. When it caused me thus 

 to dodge and miss my bird, I got a little * riled.' 



