224 SUNSHINE AND SPORT IN 



the hill, I had no presentiment that my education 

 in the malice of mosquitoes was to be (as I hope) 

 completed there. I thought I knew something of 

 these insects elsewhere, on the far northern shores 

 of the Baltic, in the comfortable verandahs of Java 

 and Ceylon, on the promenade deck of a steamer 

 anchored for a summer fortnight in a Queensland 

 estuary, and in the dreamy garden of a little resi- 

 dence on the outskirts of Morocco City. Even my 

 large and airy apartment in the hotel at Havana 

 had contributed a very little to my knowledge. 

 But in the short space of a week, Montego Bay 

 surpassed them all. As a matter of fact, I stayed 

 there during an exceptionally bad week, the second 

 in June, immediately after heavy rains, which 

 always wash the mosquito from its hammock on the 

 stalks of the guinea-grass and brace it for further 

 villainy. It happened therefore that the Montego 

 Bay mosquitoes turned out to welcome me in such 

 force that one morning I counted no fewer than 

 one hundred and sixty-two of them clinging to the 

 walls of my room, including both Culex and 

 Anopheles (sixty of the latter). This total doubt- 

 less excluded a number in inaccessible parts of the 

 wall, which I did not investigate, as well as a few 

 that had managed to get within my ramparts, inflict 

 their maddening bites on my ankles and then die 

 the death on the curtains. In all, therefore, two 

 hundred would probably be no exaggeration. I 

 went down to breakfast with swollen ankles and 

 tingling wrists, but of course got no sympathy. 

 Creoles take no notice of these domestic nightingales 

 and chuckle over the newcomer's misery, just as 

 equally sympathetic folk at home shake their sides 



