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Updated: June 19, 2025
Our northward trail led along the high ground a league or two to the east of the northward-flowing Rio Sacre. Each night we camped on one of the small tributary brooks that fed it. Fiala, Kermit, and I occupied one tent. In the daytime the "pium" flies, vicious little sand-flies, became bad enough to make us finally use gloves and head- nets.
And, First, They tell us, that it is needless to abolish utterly things and rites which the Papists have abused to idolatry and superstition, and that it is enough to purge them from the abuse, and to restore them again to their right use. Hence Saravia will not have pium crucis usum to be abolished cum abusu, but holds it enough that the abuse and superstition be taken away.
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.
Before I was aware of the presence of flies, I felt a slight itching on my neck, wrist, and ankles, and, on looking for the cause, saw a number of tiny objects having a disgusting resemblance to lice, adhering to the skin. This was my introduction to the much-talked-of Pium.
He not only refused to admit the proof of the descent of man from monkey, he would not even allow that the descent of one race from another has been demonstrated. In spite of all the plausible hypotheses it remains “so far only a pium desiderium.” The race obstinately maintains its specific distinctness, and resists variation, or gradual transformation into another.
We made acquaintance on this coast with a new insect pest, the Pium, a minute fly, two thirds of a line in length, which here commences its reign, and continues henceforward as a terrible scourge along the upper river, or Solimoens, to the end of the navigation on the Amazons.
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.
I once travelled with a middle-aged Portuguese, who was laid up for three weeks from the attacks of Pium; his legs being swelled to an enormous size, and the punctures aggravated into spreading sores. A brisk wind from the east sprang tip early in the morning of the 22nd we then hoisted all sail, and made for the mouth of the Rio Negro.
I remembered Catullus's lines. Desine de quoquam quicquam bene velle mereri, Aut aliquem fieri posse putare pium. Omnia sunt ingrata: nihil fecisse benigne est: Immo, etiam taedet, taedet obestque magis; Ut mihi, quem nemo gravius nec acerbius urget, Quam modo qui me unum atque unicum amicum habuit.
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