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Travellers may talk as they please of mosquitoes being the scourge of new countries; the bugs in Canada are worse, and the black fly and sand-fly superlatively superior in annoyance. The black fly exists in the neighbourhood of rivers or swamps, and attacks you behind the ear, drawing a pretty copious supply of blood at each bite.
The houses, crépi or parget below and bamboo above, are mere band-boxes raised from the ground; the smaller perfectly imitated poultry-crates. All appeared unusually neat and clean, with ornamental sheets of clam-shells trodden into the earth before the thresholds. 'Fetish' was abundant, and so was that worst of all plagues the sand-fly.
This first one, who had just dismounted from his bay polo-pony, was Mortimer, of the Intelligence tall, straight, and hawk-faced, with khaki tunic and riding-breeches, drab putties, a scarlet cummerbund, and a skin tanned to the red of a Scotch fir by sun and wind, and mottled by the mosquito and the sand-fly.
But the temporary relief that we had hoped for was only an exchange of tormentors: our new assailant, the horse-fly, or bull-dog, ranged in the hottest glare of the sun, and carried off a portion of flesh at each attack. Another noxious insect, the smallest, but not the least formidable, was the sand-fly known in Canada by the name of the brulot.
The burning of aromatic or pungent compounds is useless, and as for killing them, one might lie awake all night, scuffling and dabbing and slapping at the almost invisible forms without gaining the slightest benefit. In the day time they hide in cracks in the ground, under bits of matting or anywhere out of the sun. Sand-fly fever is a malady that begins like influenza. One aches all over.
The camps were situated in the coolest and most comfortable places, but in spite of everything, death was a frequent result, and recoveries were apt to be only partial. Men who had had a bad stroke were rarely of any further use in the country. Another sickness of the hot season which now began to claim less victims was sand-fly fever.
I would never again go into mosquito or sand-fly country without it.
Obviously I didn't disclose my foolishness to the MO and so I was diagnosed as having sand-fly fever, that good old stand-by when they didn't know what was really wrong with you and I was sent to hospital. I remember having a temperature of 104°F and I vaguely remember going into and coming out of delirium.
The sands on which we had so long encamped were much infested by the small mosquito or sand-fly, which is the most troublesome of all, and would hardly ever allow us to sleep; our bread was all spoiled, and our bacon became rotten, and we had hardly now any thing to eat.
The fact of the Amazons being a limited stream, having its origin in narrow rivulets, its beginning and its ending, has never entered the heads of most of the people who have passed their whole lives on its banks. Santarem is a pleasant place to live in, irrespective of its society. There are no insect pests, mosquito, pium, sand-fly, or motuca.
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