ANNOYANCE FROM GARRAPATAS. 



205 



objects, and it was only by sitting, or rather lying 

 down, that I could examine them. One subject at 

 first sight struck me as being a representation of the 

 mask found at Palenque. I was extremely desirous 

 to get this off entire, but found, by experiments upon 

 other parts of the plaster with the machete, that it 

 would be impossible to do so, and left it untouched. 



In the interest of the work, I did not discover that 

 thousands of garrapatas were crawling over me. 

 These insects are the scourge of Yucatan, and al- 

 together they were a more constant source of an- 

 noyance and suffering than any we encountered in 

 the country. I had seen something of them in Cen- 

 tral America, but at a different season, when the 

 hot sun had killed off the immensity of their num- 

 bers, and those left had attained such a size that a 

 single one could easily be seen and picked off. 

 These, in colour, size, and numbers, were like grains 

 of sand. They disperse themselves all over the 

 body, get into the seams of the clothes, and, like the 

 insect known among us as the tick, bury themselves 

 in the flesh, causing an irritation that is almost in- 

 tolerable. The only way to get rid of them effectu- 

 ally is by changing all the clothes. In Uxmal we 

 had not been troubled with them, for they are said 

 to breed only in those woods where cattle pasture, 

 and the grounds about Uxmal had been used as a 

 milpa, or plantation of corn. It was the first time 

 I had ever had them upon me in such profusion, 

 and their presence disturbed most materially the 



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