112 MULTUM E PAEVO. 



their sufferings, or they accelerate dissolution by plunging 

 headlong into the rivers, " * 



Perhaps worse, however, than these, or any of them, 

 are the musquitoes ; not that their virulence or fatality 

 equals that of the tsetse or zimb, but because they are 

 almost universally distributed. Those, terrible as they 

 are, are limited to certain districts, but the musquito is 

 ubiquitous, and everywhere is a pest and a torment. 

 One needs to spend a night among musquitoes to under- 

 stand what a true plague of flies is. Hundreds of tra- 

 vellers might be cited on the subject, and if I adduce the 

 following testimony, it is not because it is the strongest I 

 could find, but because it is one of the most recent, and 

 therefore least known : — 



That traveller of all travellers, Mr Atkinson, who has 

 laid open to us the most magnificent scenery of the world, 

 and the most inaccessible, to whom neither the most fear- 

 ful chasms and precipices, nor boiling torrents and swift 

 rivers, nor earthquakes and furious storms, nor eternal 

 frost and snow, nor burning waterless steppes, nor robbers,, 

 nor wild beasts, presented any impediment, — fairly con- 

 fesses his conqueror in the musquito. The gnat alone, of 

 all creatures, elicits from him a word of dread ; — he could 

 not brave the musquitoes. Over and over he tells us in 

 his mountain scrambles, that the musquitoes were there 

 "in millions," — that they were "taking a most savage 

 revenge on him for having sent his horses out of their 

 reach," ■ — that they were " devouring " him, — that he 



* Spence's Travels in Circassia, L, p. 59. 



