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We were bitten by huge horse-flies, the size of bumblebees. More serious annoyance was caused by the pium and boroshuda flies during the hours of daylight, and by the polvora, the sand-flies, after dark. There were a few mosquitoes. The boroshudas were the worst pests; they brought the blood at once, and left marks that lasted for weeks. I did my writing in head-net and gauntlets.
Go back to Aristotle, and we may listen to him again while he talks of many other kindred insects: of the humble-bee and its kind, of the mason-bee with its hard round nest of clay, of the robber-bees, and of the various wasps and hornets; or (still more curiously and unexpectedly) of the hunter-wasp or 'ichneumon', and how it kills the spider, carries it home to its nest, and lays its eggs in its poor body, that the little wasp-grubs may afterwards be fed. Or again of the great wasps which he calls Anthrenae, and how they chase the big flies, and cut off their heads, and fly away with the rest of the carcass all agreeing to the very letter with what Henri Fabre tells us of a certain large wasp of Southern Europe, and how it captures the big 'taons' or horse-flies: 'Pour donner le coup de grâce
Dick was obliged to confess the dish a failure, so it was thrown out after having been offered to Crusoe, who gave it one sniff and turned away in silence. Then they mounted and resumed their journey. At this place mosquitoes and horse-flies troubled our hunters and their steeds a good deal. The latter especially were very annoying to the poor horses.
The next day, at noon, we encamped on the stream, and though with little hope of success, I threw in my fishing-line, baiting my hook with horse-flies and grasshoppers. My hooks had scarcely sunk in the water, when the bait was taken, and to my astonishment and delight, I soon dragged out of the water two very large trout.
The body, arms, and legs of Miss Tick could be scratched to nothing by poisonous finger-nails, but her detached head was eternal, and through eternity she bit and gnawed and sometimes laughed in the hollow of her black soul. For the horses, mules, and cattle there were shrubs which disagreed with them, and gigantic horse-flies.
We went from here to Mechanicsville, where the heavy fighting was done the evening before. Here the Yankee dead had not been moved, and the swarms of horse-flies that arose from the dead carcasses rendered it necessary for each man to hold one hand over his mouth and nose. It is impossible to describe the scene as it was.
It floated on the surface of the water, penetrated into our clothes, hair, eyes, and ears, our provisions were covered over with it, and our blankets half buried when we lay down at nights, it was a perpetual and never-ceasing torment, and as if to increase our miseries we were again afflicted with swarms of large horse-flies, which bit us dreadfully.
He spoke of "our glorious summer of Liberty" being infested and pestered with noisy, provoking things, which he characterized under the names of dor-bugs, millers, and all those creatures which fly into the room when the lamp is lighted; the swarms of black gnats which are about your head in the woods; horse-flies which stick, and leave blood running; and devil's-darning-needles.
Hilliard's black hair was powdered with dust; his olive face was gray; dust lay thick in the folds of his neck-handkerchief; his pony matched the gray-white road and plodded wearily, coughing and tossing his head in misery from the nose-flies, the horse-flies, the mosquitoes, a swarm of small, tormenting presences.
After throwing away the remains of yesterday's meat, one night in this climate being enough to putrefy it, l'Encuerado arranged some fishing-lines along the stream, and our little party set off, struggling against the heat, the mosquitoes, and the horse-flies. The Indian, following the flight of a purple-feathered bird, led us close to an immense ant-hill.
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