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When the growth was very dense, the morning and evening camps were perhaps only separated by a league. Anon we struggled through a swamp, or the horses stuck fast in a bog, and the carapatas feasted on our blood. "What are carapatas?" you ask. They are leeches, bugs, mosquitos, gad-flies, etc., all compounded into one venomous insect!
And there was the still greater task of keeping them under control on a hot, close day to hedge them in in full gallop, so that they stood in the middle of the meadow stamping on the ground with uplifted tails, in fear of the gad-flies.
Moreover, the question of health may well be involved. There is nothing to tell us that the Spider, that treat for the Pompilus, is not poison, or at least unwholesome food, to the Bembex, the lover of Gad-flies; that the Ammophila's succulent caterpillar is not repugnant to the stomach of the Sphex fed upon the dry Acridian.
Scenery of the Hills Ladik, the Ancient Laodicea The Plague of Gad-Flies Camp at Ilguen A Natural Warm Bath The Gad-Flies Again A Summer Landscape Ak-Sheher The Base of Sultan Dagh The Fountain of Midas A Drowsy Journey The Town of Bolawaduen. "By the forests, lakes, and fountains, Though the many-folded mountains." Shelley. Bolawaduen, July 1, 1852.
Settlers have carried the house-fly in bottles and boxes for their new locations, but what European insect will follow us and extirpate the tsetse? The Arabs have given the Makondé bugs, but we have the house-fly wherever we go, the blue-bottle and another like the house-fly, but with a sharp proboscis; and several enormous gad-flies. Here there is so much room for everything.
They saw, however, they were not bees, but insects somewhat smaller, of a brown colour, resembling gad-flies, and exceedingly active in their flight. Thousands of them hovered above each horse, and hundreds could be seen lighting upon the heads, necks, bodies, and legs of the animals, in fact, all over them. They were evidently either biting or stinging them.
And there was the still greater task of keeping them under control on a hot, close day to hedge them in in full gallop, so that they stood in the middle of the meadow stamping on the ground with uplifted tails, in fear of the gad-flies.
In due succession there came "Where the Gad-Flies Cease from Troubling," "The Haven of the Herd," and "A-dream in Dairyland," studies of walnut trees and dun cows.
A large umbrella saves me from sunstroke. It is the most scorching hour of the hottest day in the year. Exhausted by the heat, the Cicadae are silent. The bronze-eyed Gad-flies seek a refuge from the pitiless sun under the roof of my silken shelter; other large Flies, the sobre-hued Pangoniae, dash themselves recklessly against my face.
One would think that they were two friends meeting on the threshold, one going in, the other out! It is written in the book of fate: everything shall happen without impediment in the burrow of the Bembex; and next year, if we open the cells of that mighty huntress of Gad-flies, we shall find some which contain a russet-silk cocoon, the shape of a thimble with its orifice closed with a flat lid.
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