REAL TROUBLE
It was now midsummer and Bruce and Ray learned something which even to this day few eastern people seem really to know. They became more acquainted every day with two terrible pests of the North Country, two pests which make some parts of North America practically uninhabitable during the time these pests are at their worst. During this time even the Indians, who are not thin-skinned when it comes to enduring mosquitoes and black flies, keep out of the worst infested regions.
Mosquitoes breed in shallow stagnant water, where small fish and minnows cannot destroy their larvæ, the wrigglers; while black flies breed in rapidly running water. As the three friends travelled northward, Ganawa was careful to select camp-sites that [[145]]were not near shallow warm bays but were exposed to such breezes as might be blowing.
Mosquitoes are weak fliers, and do not venture out in a good breeze, nor do they like hot sunlight, but on warm muggy days and during fairly warm nights, they are a fearful pest to both man and beast and to some extent even to young birds in the nest. At several camping-places, although Ganawa had chosen the best sites within reach, the mosquitoes were so bad that immediately after sunset the travellers had to withdraw into their tepee, in which they kept a smudge going, so the mosquitoes would not come in through the opening at the top. On warm nights there were, however, always some mosquitoes in the tepee. Ganawa protected himself against these by sleeping, Indian fashion, with his head under the blanket, but the white boys spent several bad nights before they could get used to this way of sleeping.
When the lads asked Ganawa where mosquitoes and black flies were during winter, [[146]]their guide looked puzzled and admitted that he did not know. “The Indians do not know,” he said, “where the little biters go when the frost comes. It may be that a bad spirit makes them every summer.”
If the mosquitoes caused the boys to spend several miserable nights, the black flies annoyed them much during the day. Whenever they had to make a portage, or when they explored a brush-covered region, these little pests attacked their faces and hands. Many people do not at once feel the bite of a black fly, but the insect leaves a puncture from which the blood will run, and on several days Ray and Bruce looked as if they had been in a big fight.
During the next few days, the travellers saw many moose, but they were all so poor that the lads claimed to be able to count their ribs. Nearly all the moose they saw were in the water and Ganawa explained to them that they feed on plants in the bottom of the lakes only on warm days when the flies are bad. “On cool days,” he told the [[147]]lads, “they eat brush, and they eat brush during the winter.” On one short exploring trip Ray suddenly let out a yell as if he had stepped on a rattlesnake. Then he rushed away brushing his ears and face with his hands. “Don’t go there!” he called to his friends; “a moose has been lying down there and he has left a million black flies.”
These were hard days and weeks for Ray and Bruce; they both lost much weight and grew almost as thin as the moose they saw in the lakes.
The months of June and July are what woodsmen call the “fly season” in the country of the Great Lakes and the Upper Mississippi. But this is also the time when the birds sing and the early flowers are in bloom and when the fish bite most actively. By the first of August, the beautiful fire-weeds are still in bloom, but the birds are silent and the fish are more sluggish. By this time the lake trout, for instance, have retired into deep water, where it is difficult to catch them. [[148]]
However, with modern protection against flies and mosquitoes no boy or man need fear to go into the North Woods in June and July. And the one condition on which he must not fail is complete and absolute protection from mosquitoes at night. Flies and mosquitoes may worry a man in the daytime, he may get much heated on a long march, or he may fall into cold water, but if he can have a good sleep at night, a man in good health can laugh at all hardships.