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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.
As the heat increased, mosquitoes in the woods and sand-flies on the beach rendered the shelter of the house desirable most of the time. But though Fitzgerald had usually spent the summer months in travelling, he seemed perfectly contented to sing and doze and trifle away his time by Rosa's side, week after week. Floracita did not find it entertaining to be a third person with a couple of lovers.
The air of the church was perfectly thick with sand-flies; and the disgraceful carelessness of the congregation in responding and singing the hymns, and their entire neglect of the prayer-book regulations for kneeling, disturbed and displeased me even more than the last time I was at church; but I think that was because of the total absence of excitement or feeling among the whole population of St.
How pleasant to have been able to call at a cottage, and get a draught of home-brewed! On the contrary, could not find even a pond, or a pint of water, and was nearly worried to death by sand-flies. 2d. Some scabby sheep having got among our flock, have played the deuce with it. The scab has regularly broke out. Dressing lambs all morning beastly work.
Because there are such reprehensible and unutterably detestable insects as mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and bull-dogs; and there is such a thing as being bitten, and stung, and worried, and sucked into a sort of partial madness; and I have seen such sights as men perpetually slapping their own faces, and scratching the skin off their own cheeks with their own nails, and getting no relief thereby, but rather making things worse; and I have, moreover, seen men's heads swelled until the eyes and noses were lost, and the mouths only visible when opened, and their general aspect like that of a Scotch haggis; and there is a time when all this accumulates on man and beast till the latter takes to the water in desperation, and the former takes to intermittent insanity, and that time is summer.
... "Variety is pleasing! Got away from mosquitoes to find sand-flies and harvest-bugs instead. However, they are quiet by day, and here there are no flies with irritating feet. There must be some wonderful mystery about this life. Why should these countries be so full of annoyances to man? Why should even the alighting of a fly, his footprints, cause such irritation to the skin.
This fever, which, as its name indicates, was contracted from the bites of sand-flies, varied widely in virulence. Sometimes it was so severe that the victim had to be evacuated to India; as a rule he went no farther than a base hospital at Baghdad or Amara. One of the things about which the Tommy felt most keenly in the Mesopotamian campaign was that there was no such thing as a "Cushy Blighty."
There are no sand-flies, nor bête-rouge, nor mosquitos in this pretty spot. The fire-flies during the night vie in numbers and brightness with the stars in the firmament above: the air is pure, and the north-east breeze blows a refreshing gale throughout the day.
"Upwards of twenty years ago, if my memory does not fail me, Samuel Lloyd, Esq., of London, who was one of the late trustees for establishing this colony, and was fourteen years in Italy, and very largely concerned in the silk business, wrote to me, that the best silk was produced at a distance from the sea-coast, owing, I suppose, to the richness of the soil, which made the mulberry leaf more glutinous, nutritive and healthy to the silk-worm; also, to their not being obnoxious to musquetoes and sand-flies, and probably, likewise, to the weather being more equal and less liable to sudden transition from heat to cold: and on a conversation this day with Mr.
It is a time intermediate between the season of heat and the season of floods a brief time, but one in which the country is at its best. Mosquitoes and sand-flies vanish. A lovely bird, a deep blue and russet, sings in the groves. The blue jay screams and darts through the palm trees. It is possible to understand how in the Eastern poets the beauty of women is constantly compared with the moon.
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