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tered the Cassiquiare. At Esmeralda, at the 

 eastern extremity of the Upper Oroonoko, where 

 ends the known world of the Spaniards, the 

 clouds of moschettoes are almost as thick as at 

 the great cataracts. At Mandavaca we found 

 an old missionary, who told us with ail air of 

 sadness, that he had spent his twenty years of 

 moschettoes* in America. He desired us to 

 look well at his legs, that we might be able to 

 tell one day, " por alia (beyond sea), what the 

 poor monks suffer in the forests of Cassiquiare " 

 Every sting leaving a small darkish brown point, 

 his legs were so speckled, that it was difficult to 

 recognize the whiteness of his skin through the 

 spots of coagulated blood. If the insects of the 

 simulium genus abound in the Cassiquiare, which 

 has white ivaters, the culices* or zancudoes, are 

 so much the more rare ; you scarcely find any 

 there, while on the rivers of black waters, in the 

 Atabapo and the Rio Negro, there are generally 

 some zancudoes and no moschettoes. We have 

 mentioned above, that in the petty revolutions, 

 which from time to time agitate the order of the 

 Observance of St. Francis, when the padre-guar- 

 dian chooses to exercise his vengeance on a lay 

 brother, he sends him to Esmeralda ; this is a 

 state of exile, or, as the monks jocularly say, he 

 is condemned to the moschettoes. 



* " Ya tengo mis vente annos de mosquitos." 



