MULTUM E PARVO. 



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 understand 

 what a true plague of flies is. Hundreds of trav- 

 ellers might be cited on the subject, and if I ad- 

 duce 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 fearful chasms and preci- 

 pices, 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 impedi- 

 ment, — fairly confesses his conqueror in the mus- 

 quito. 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 "de- 

 vouring" him— that he "neither dared to sleep 

 nor to look out;" — that "the humming sound of 

 the millions was something awful;"— that he 

 found himself "in the very regions of torment," 

 which "it was utterly impossible to endure;"— 

 that "the poor horses stood with their heads in 

 the smoke, as a protection against the pests;"— 

 and that "to have remained on the spot would 

 111 



