"The King of Siam is a Pagan, nor do his Subjects know any other Religion. They have divers Mosquees, Monasteries, and Chappels."—Ibid. p. 104.
c. 1662.—"... he did it only for love to their Mammon; and would have sold afterwards for as much more St. Peter's ... to the Turks for a Mosquito."—Crowley, Discourse concerning the Govt. of O. Cromwell.
1680.—Consn. Ft. St. Geo. March 28: "Records the death of Cassa Verona ... and a dispute arising as to whether his body should be burned by the Gentues or buried by the Moors, the latter having stopped the procession on the ground that the deceased was a Mussleman and built a Musseet in the Towne to be buried in, the Governor with the advice of his Council sent an order that the body should be burned as a Gentue, and not buried by the Moors, it being apprehended to be of dangerous consequence to admit the Moors such pretences in the Towne."—Notes and Exts. No. iii. p. 14.
1719.—"On condition they had a [Cowle] granted, exempting them from paying the Pagoda or Musqueet duty."—In Wheeler, ii. 301.
1727.—"There are no fine Buildings in the City, but many large Houses, and some Caravanserays and Muscheits."—A. Hamilton, i. 161; [ed. 1774, i. 163].
c. 1760.—"The Roman Catholic Churches, the Moorish Moschs, the Gentoo Pagodas, the worship of the Parsees, are all equally unmolested and tolerated."—Grose, i. 44.
[1862.—"... I slept at a Musheed, or village house of prayer."—Brinckman, Rifle in Cashmere, 78.]
MOSQUITO, s. A gnat is so called in the tropics. The word is Spanish and Port. (dim. of mosca, 'a fly'), and probably came into familiar English use from the East Indies, though the earlier quotations show that it was first brought from S. America. A friend annotates here: "Arctic mosquitoes are worst of all; and the Norfolk ones (in the Broads) beat Calcutta!"
It is related of a young Scotch lady of a former generation who on her voyage to India had heard formidable, but vague accounts of this terror of the night, that on seeing an elephant for the first time, she asked: "Will yon be what's called a musqueetae?"
1539.—"To this misery was there adjoyned the great affliction, which the Flies and Gnats (por parte dos atabões e mosquitos), that coming out of the neighbouring Woods, bit and stung us in such sort, as not one of us but was gore blood."—Pinto (orig. cap. xxiii.), in Cogan, p. 29.