120 SALMON FISHING IN CANADA. 



MOSQUITOES. 



" Among the plagues on earth which God has sent 



Of lighter torment, is the plague of flies : 

 Not as of Egypt once the punishment,* 



Yet such, sometimes, as feeble patience tries. 



Where wild America in vastness lies, 

 Three diverse hordes the swamps and woods infest. 



Banded or singly these make man their prize ; 

 Quick by their subtle dart is blood expressed 

 Or tumour raised. By tiny foe distressed, f 



Travellers in forest rude, with veil are fain 

 To arm the face ; men there whose dwellings rest 



Crouch in thick smoke; like help their cattle gain.J 

 wise in trials great, in troubles small, 

 Who know to find mementos of the Fall." 



But to return to our Sunday at the Saguenay. The 

 morning dawned bright, serene, and clear ; everything on 

 board the cutter had been made as clean as holystone and 

 swabs, and mops could make them the evening before. 

 About half past ten o'clock Mr. Price, accompanied by six 



* "We do not read, however, that in this plague, which, like others, 

 had its pointed meaning, independently of its simple effect as a judgment, 

 the sting of the insects formed an addition to it." 



f " The three kinds of stinging insects which we encountered, are called 

 by the French Canadians marungouins, moustiques, and brulots ; the first, 

 and not the moustiques, being our mosquitoes. The two latter are extremely 

 small black flies, one of them almost imperceptible, which draw the blood." 



\ "I have been assured that the cattle, in situations where this protec- 

 tion is provided for them, come lowing to the house to have the fire renewed, 

 if it happens to fail. It is necessary, sometimes, that they should stand in 

 a thick smoke to be milked." 



" My moral is, I hope, less equivocal than that which concludes Gay's 

 fable of the Man and the Flea ; the insect being made there to declare, in 

 repression of human arrogance and self-elation, ' that men were made for 

 fleas to eat.' " 



