272 
PRAGUE OF MOBQUIT0S. 
it should be remembered that almost all matters of popular 
belief, even those most absurd in appearance, rest on real 
facts, but facts ill observed. In treating them with disdain> 
the traces of a discovery may often be lost, in natural philo- 
sophy as well as in zoology. We will not then admit, with 
a Spanish author, that the fable of the ‘ man of the woods 
was invented by the artifice of Indian women, who pre- 
tended to have been carried off, when they had been long 
absent unknown to their husbands. Travellers who may 
hereafter visit the missions of the Orinoco will do well to 
follow up our researches on the salvaje or great devil of the 
woods ; and examine whether it be some unknown species 
of bear, or some very rare monkey analogous to the Sum 3, 
chiropotes, or Simia satanas, which may have given rise to 
such singular talcs. 
After having spent two days near the cataract of AtureS, 
we were not sorry when our "boat was reladen, and we were 
enabled to leave a spot where the temperature of the. air 
is generally by day twenty-nine degrees, and by nigh 1 
twenty-six degrees, of the centigrade thermometer. This 
temperature seemed to us to be still much more elevated, 
from the feeling of heat which we experienced. The want 
of concordance between the instruments and the sensation 8 
must be attributed to the continual irritation of the skin 
excited by the mosquitos. An atmosphere filled with veno- 
mous insects always appears to be more heated than it 18 
in reality. We were horribly tormented in the day by 
mosquitos and the jejen, a small venomous fly (simuliuin)> 
and at night by the zancudos, a large species of gna • 
dreaded even by the natives. Our hands began to swi'l 
considerably, and this swelling increased daily till our arrive 
on the banks of the Temi. The means that are employe® 
to escape from these little plagues are very extraordinary' 
The good missionary Bernardo Zea, who passed his In 0 
tormented by mosquitos, had constructed near the church, 
on a scaffolding of trunks of palm-trees, a small apartment; 
in which we breathed more freely. To this we went up ll j 
the evening, by means of a ladder, to dry our plants an 
write our journal. The missionary had justly observe 1 - , 
that tlie insects abounded more particularly in the l°' v ®y 
strata of the atmosphere, that which reaches from t® 
