280 EFFECTS OF THE MOSQUITO-STING. 
ment where a European recently landed is exposed to the 
attack of the nigua or ehegoe (Pulex penetrans). Tins’ 
animal, almost invisible to the eye, gets under the toe-nau», 
and there acquires the size of a small pea, by the quick 
increase of its eggs, which are placed in a bag under the 
belly of the insect. The nigua therefore distinguishes what 
the most delicate chemical analysis could not distinguish, 
the cellular membrane and blood of a European from those 
of a creole white. The mosquitos, on the contrary, attack 
equally the natives and the Europeans; but the effects o 
the sting are different in the two races of men. The same 
venomous liquid, deposited in the skin of a copper-colouiei 
man of Indian race, and in that of a white man newly 
landed, causes no swelling in the former, while in the latter 
it produces hard blisters, greatly inflamed, and painful tor 
several days ; so different is the action on the epidermis, 
according to the degree of irritability of the organs in- 
different races and different individuals ! 
I shall here recite several facts, which prove that the 
Indians, and in general all the people of colour, at the 
moment of being stung, suffer like the whites, although 
perhaps with less intensity of pain. In the day -time, an 
even when labouring at the oar, the natives, in order o 
chase the insects, are continually giving one another smai 
slaps with the palm of the hand. They even strike them- 
selves and their comrades mechanically during their sleep- 
The violence of their blows reminds one of the Persian tam 
of the bear that tried to kill with his paw the insects on the 
forehead of his sleeping master. Near Maypures we saw 
some young Indians seated in a circle and rubbing cructl) 
each others’ backs with the bark of trees dried at the nr 0 ' 
Indian women were occupied, with a degree of patience o 
•which the copper-coloured race alone ai - e capable, in extrac 
traoting, by means of a sharp bone, the little mass of coag 11 ' 
lated blood that forms the centre of every sting, and give® 
the skin a speckled appearance. One of the most barbarous 
nations of the Orinoco, that of the Ottomacs, is acquainted 
with the use of mosquito-curtains (mosquiteros) woven 
from the fibres of the moriche palm-tree. At Kiguerote- 
on the coast of Caracas, the copper-coloured people s lee b 
buried in the sand. In the villages of the Eio Magda 1 
