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Updated: June 24, 2025
Yet they cannot deny that some of the very best men in the regiment are South Carolinians. December 3, 1862. 7 P.M. What a life is this I lead! It is a dark, mild, drizzling evening, and as the foggy air breeds sand-flies, so it calls out melodies and strange antics from this mysterious race of grown-up children with whom my lot is cast.
It promised sand-flies, the prime pest of this region; a tall amphitheatre of trees on a dune to the west excluded the sea- breeze, and northwards a swampy hollow was a fine breeding place for M. Maringouin. Nche Mpolo lies some three miles nearly due south of Mbata; the single street contains fourteen cottages and two palaver houses.
If we landed, and sought any shade, the mosquitos would drive us at once to the glare of the sun. Besides this plague, sand-flies, gnats, swamp-flies, ants, and other insects abounded. The little black ant is especially bold and warlike.
I found myself engaged in a more laborious work than I had ever yet undertaken towing the boat day after day against a current flowing in a continuous rapid, so as to admit of not one moment's relaxation, unless during the short interval allowed for rest to such as could take it no easy matter when myriads of sand-flies and mosquitoes filled the air and tortured us incessantly.
Then we were bitten by the frost now we shall be bitten by the sand-flies, and mosquitoes, and bats, and snakes, and scorpions, and spiders, and stung by wasps, and centipedes, and great red ants! Trust me, you shall have a change! Perhaps you do not contemplate such a change with any very lively feelings of pleasure. Come! do not be alarmed at the snakes, and scorpions, and centipedes!
They also bite all round the nails of your fingers and toes, unless they are closely covered. It must be said that insects are a great discomfort at Sarawak. Mosquitoes, and sand-flies, and stinging flies which turn your hands into the likeness of boxing-gloves, infest the banks of the rivers, and the sea-shore.
The nights were broken by sand-flies. Personally, I found the only way of keeping them out was to wear socks on the feet and hands, and smear the face and neck with some kind of ointment, on which their feet slip, so that they cannot find a purchase when in the act of driving their sucking apparatus into the skin.
Twelve miles up the Richelieu, the Iroquois landed to camp. The prisoners were pegged out on the sand, elbows trussed to knees, each captive tied to a post. In this fashion they lay every night of encampment, tortured by sand-flies that they were powerless to drive off.
These tents are dreadfully warm during the day, and exceedingly cold at night; they are, moreover, notwithstanding their proximity to the sea, and the benefit of its breezes, filled with mosquitoes, or sand-flies, which are equally troublesome.
Such immense and lustrous butterflies I had never seen but in dreams; and not even dreams had prepared me for sand-flies. Almost too small to be seen, they inflicted a bite which appeared larger than themselves, a positive wound, more torturing than that of a mosquito, and leaving more annoyance behind. These tormentors elevated dress-parade into the dignity of a military engagement.
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