A MOSQUITO ON THE SCENT.
To be stung by a black hornet or a scorpion is bad; to be bitten by a tarantula or rattlesnake is worse; but to be punctured to the bone by the bugle of one of these mosquitoes is terrible. They are enormous insects. When flying through the air they are as discernible as thistle-down, or even humming birds. The sharp tube through which they sap their victim’s blood is fully three-quarters of an inch long, and resembles a cambric needle; this they steadily and unhesitatingly press into the flesh until they either strike a bone, or their forehead prevents them from doing deeper injury.
Towards evening they rise with pining maws from the low, damp land around the city—
“Innumerable as the blades of green,
That carpet the vale of the San Joaquin;”
and as they close in upon the devoted inhabitants, their blended cries swell in pitch and compass until the sound resembles the impassioned tone of a fish-peddler’s horn. I stopped at a hotel in the lower part of the city, and before retiring for the night looked carefully about the room. As few mosquitoes were in sight, I concluded to sleep without using the bar. Congratulating myself on being assigned a room where so few of the common enemy of man were lying in wait, I extinguished the light and turned in.
Scarce was I stretched upon the couch when
“At once there rose such hungry yells,
From every point the compass tells,”