Mosquitos (Culex pinguis, nov. sp.)—Reader, if you have never been in British Columbia, then, I say, you do not know anything about insect persecution; neither can you form the faintest idea of the terrible suffering foes so seemingly insignificant as the bloodthirsty horsefly (Tabanus), the tiny burning fly (beulot or sand-fly of the trappers), and the well-known and deservedly-hated mosquito, are capable of inflicting.
A wanderer from my boyhood, I have met with these pests in various parts of our globe—in the country of Czernomorzi, among the Black Sea Cossacks, on the plains of Troy, up on Mount Olympus, amid the gorgeous growths of a tropical forest, where beauty and malaria, twin brothers, walk hand-in-hand—away in the deep dismal solitudes of the swamps on the banks of the Mississippi, on the wide grassy tracts of the Western prairies, and on the snow-clad summits of the Rocky Mountains.
Widely remote and singularly opposite as to climate as are these varied localities, yet, as these pests are there in legions, I imagined that I had endured the maximum of misery they were capable of producing. I was mistaken; all my experience, all my vaunted knowledge of their numbers, all I had seen and suffered, was as nothing to what I subsequently endured. On the Sumass prairie, and along the banks of the Fraser river, the mosquitos are, as a Yankee would say, ‘a caution.’
In the summer our work, that of cutting the Boundary-line, was along the low and comparatively flat land intervening between the seaboard and the foot of the Cascade Mountains. Our camp was on the Sumass prairie, and was in reality only an open patch of grassy land, through which wind numerous streams from the mountains, emptying themselves into a large shallow lake, the exit of which is into the Fraser by a short stream, the Sumass river.
In May and June this prairie is completely covered with water. The Sumass river, from the rapid rise of the Fraser, reverses its course, and flows back into the lake instead of out of it. The lake fills, overflows, and completely floods the lower lands. On the subsidence of the waters, we pitched our tents on the edge of a lovely stream. Wildfowl were in abundance; the streams were alive with fish; the mules and horses revelling in grass kneedeep—we were in a second Eden!
We had enjoyed about a week at this delightful camp, when the mosquitos began to get rather troublesome. We knew these most unwelcome visitors were to be expected, from Indian information. I must confess I had a vague suspicion that the pests were to be more dreaded than we were willing to believe; for the crafty redskins had stages erected, or rather fastened to stout poles driven like piles into the mud at the bottom of the lake. To these large platforms over the water they all retire, on the first appearance of the mosquitos.
In about four or five days the increase was something beyond all belief, and really terrible. I can convey no idea of the numbers, except by saying they were in dense clouds truly, and not figuratively, a thick fog of mosquitos. Night or day it was just the same; the hum of these bloodthirsty tyrants was incessant. We ate them, drank them, breathed them; nothing but the very thickest leathern clothing was of the slightest use as a protection against their lancets. The trousers had to be tied tightly round the ankle, and the coat-sleeve round the wrist, to prevent their getting in; but if one more crafty than the others found out a needle-hole, or a thin spot, it would have your blood in a second. We lighted huge fires, fumigated the tents, tried every expedient we could think of, but all in vain. They seemed to be quite happy in a smoke that would stifle anything mortal, and, what was worse, they grew thicker every day.
Human endurance has its limits. A man cannot stand being eaten alive. It was utterly impossible to work; one’s whole time was occupied in slapping viciously at face, head, and body, stamping, grumbling, and savagely slaughtering hecatombs of mosquitos. Faces rapidly assumed an irregularity of outline anything but consonant with the strict lines of beauty; each one looked as if he had gone in for a heavy fight, and lost. Hands increased in size with painful rapidity, and—without intending a slang joke—one was in a k-nobby state from head to heel.
The wretched mules and horses were driven wild, racing about like mad animals, dashing into the water and out again, in among the trees; but, go where they would, their persecutors stuck to them in swarms. The poor dogs sat and howled piteously, and, prompted by a wise instinct to avoid their enemies, dug deep holes in the earth; and backing in lay with their heads at the entrance, whining, snapping, and shaking their ears, to prevent the mosquitos from getting in at them.
There was no help for it—our camp had to be abandoned; we were completely vanquished and driven away—the work of about a hundred men stopped by tiny flies. Our only chance of escape was to retire into the hills, and return to complete our work late in the autumn, when they disappear. Hard wind is the only thing that quells them; but it simply drives them into the grass, to return on its lulling, if possible, more savagely hungry. Quaint old Spenser knew this; he says, speaking of gnats:—