CHAPTER II.
Equally early with their contests with wild animals primeval men would have had to encounter peril, and to overcome difficulty in the fulfilment of the natural desire possessed by some of them to visit new regions of the earth. Even if the theory be true which is supported by hundreds of learned volumes, that man’s first habitation was in the most agreeable and fertile portion of Asia, by the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates, the native characteristic of enterprise would impel some among the first men to go in quest of new homes or on journeys of exploration and adventure; and, as the human family increased, removal for the youthful branches would be absolutely necessary.
To these primal travellers the perils of unknown adventure and the pressure of want would most probably have proved excitements too absorbing to have permitted a chronicle of their experience, even had the art of writing then existed. But details of adventure as wild and strange, perhaps, as any encountered by those earliest travellers exist in the volumes of recent discoverers; and while glancing at these we may imagine to ourselves similar enterprises of our race in the thousands of years which are past and gone. Let it be observed, in passing, that the young reader will find no books more richand varied in interest than those of intelligent travellers; and if our slight mention of a few of their names as partakers in the “Triumphs of Enterprise” should induce him to form a larger acquaintance with their narratives, it can scarcely fail to induce thoughts and resolves that will tend to his advantage.
The perils to be undergone in desert regions are not more forcibly described by any travellers than by Major Denham, Dr. Oudney, and Captain Clapperton, the celebrated African discoverers. “The sand-storm we had the misfortune to encounter in crossing the desert,” says the former, “gave us a pretty correct idea of the dreaded effects of these hurricanes. The wind raised the fine sand with which the extensive desert was covered so as to fill the atmosphere and render the immense space before us impenetrable to the eye beyond a few yards. The sun and clouds were entirely obscured, and a suffocating and oppressive weight accompanied the flakes and masses of sand which, I had almost said, we had to penetrate at every step. At times we completely lost sight of the camels, though only a few yards before us. The horses hung their tongues out of their mouths, and refused to face the torrents of sand. A sheep that accompanied the kafila (the travelling train), the last of our stock, lay down on the road, and we were obliged to kill him and throw the carcass on a camel. A parching thirst oppressed us, which nothing alleviated. We had made but little way by three o’clock in the afternoon, when the wind got round to the eastward and refreshed us a little; with this change we moved on until aboutfive, when we halted, protected in a measure by some hills. As we had but little wood our fare was confined to tea, and we hoped to find relief from our fatigues by a sound sleep. That, however, was denied us; the tent had been imprudently pitched, and was exposed to the east wind, which blew a hurricane during the night; the tent was blown down, and the whole detachment were employed a full hour in getting it up again. Our bedding and every thing within the tent was during that time completely buried by the constant driving of the sand. I was obliged three times during the night to get up for the purpose of strengthening the pegs; and when in the morning I awoke two hillocks of sand were formed on each side of my head some inches high.”
Camels
Dr. Oudney, the partner of Denham and Clapperton, in their adventurous enterprise, affords details more frightful in character. “Strict orders had been given during a certain day of the journey,” he informs us, “for the camels to keep close up, and for the Arabs not to straggle—the Tibboo Arabs having been seen on the look out. During the last two days,” he continues,“we had passed on the average from sixty to eighty or ninety skeletons each day; but the numbers that lay about the wells of El-Hammar were countless; those of two women, whose perfect and regular teeth bespoke them young, were particularly shocking—their arms still remained clasped round each other as they had expired, although the flesh had long since perished by being exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and the blackened bones only were left; the nails of the fingers and some of the sinews of the hand also remained, and part of the tongue of one of them still appeared through the teeth. We had now passed six days of desert without the slightest appearance of vegetation, and a little branch was brought me here as a comfort and curiosity. A few roots of dry grass, blown by the winds towards the travellers, were eagerly seized on by the Arabs, with cries of joy, for their hungry camels. Soon after the sun had retired behind the hills to the west, we descended into a wadey, where about a dozen stunted bushes, not trees, of palm marked the spot where water was to be found. The wells were so choked up withsand, that several cart-loads of it were removed previous to finding sufficient water; and even then the animals could not drink till nearly ten at night.”
Camp
Nor was it merely the horrors of the climate which these intrepid travellers had to encounter. Their visitation of various savage tribes drew them into the circle of barbarous quarrels. The peril incurred by Major Denham, while accompanying the Bornou warriors in their expedition against the Felatahs, is unsurpassed for interest in any book of travels. “My horse was badly wounded in the neck, just above the shoulder, and in the near hind leg,” says the Major, describing what had befallen himself and steed in the encounter; “an arrow had struck me in the face as it passed, merely drawing the blood. If either of my horse’s wounds had been from poisoned arrows I felt that nothing could save me [The tribe he accompanied had been worsted.] However, there was not much time for reflection; we instantly became a flying mass, and plunged, in the greatest disorder, into that wood we had but a few hours before moved through with order, and very different feelings. The spur had the effect of incapacitating my beast altogether, as the arrow, I found afterwards, had reached the shoulder-bone, and in passing over some rough ground he stumbled and fell. Almost before I was on my legs the Felatahs were upon me; I had, however, kept hold of the bridle, and, seizing a pistol from the holsters, I presented it at two of these ferocious savages, who were pressing me with their spears: they instantly went off; but another, who came on me more boldly, just as I wasendeavouring to mount, received the contents somewhere in his left shoulder, and again I was enabled to place my foot in the stirrup. Re-mounted, I again pushed my retreat; I had not, however, proceeded many hundred yards when my horse came down again, with such violence as to throw me against a tree at a considerable distance; and, alarmed at the horses behind, he quickly got up and escaped, leaving me on foot and unarmed. A chief and his four followers were here butchered and stripped; their cries were dreadful, and even now the feelings of that moment are fresh in my memory; my hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name. I was almost instantly surrounded, and incapable of making the least resistance, as I was unarmed. I was as speedily stripped; and, whilst attempting first to save my shirt and then my trousers, I was thrown on the ground. My pursuers made several thrusts at me with their spears, that badly wounded my hands in two places, and slightly my body, just under my ribs, on the right side; indeed I saw nothing before me but the same cruel death I had seen unmercifully inflicted on the few who had fallen into the power of those whonow had possession of me. My shirt was now absolutely torn off my back, and I was left perfectly naked.
Battle
“When my plunderers began to quarrel for the spoil, the idea of escape came like lightning across my mind, and, without a moment’s hesitation or reflection, I crept under the belly of the horse nearest me, and started as fast as my legs could carry me for the thickest part of the wood. Two of the Felatahs followed, and I ran on to the eastward, knowing that our stragglers would be in that direction, but still almost as much afraid of friends as of foes. My pursuers gained on me, for the prickly underwood not only obstructed my passage but tore my flesh miserably; and the delight with which I saw a mountain-stream gliding along at the bottom of a deep ravine cannot be imagined. My strength had almost left me, and I seized the young branches issuing from the stump of a large tree which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water, as the sides were precipitous, when, under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a largeliffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil, as if in the act of striking. I was horror-stricken, and deprived for a moment of all recollection; the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath; this shock, however, revived me, and with three strokes of my arms I reached the opposite bank, which with difficulty I crawled up, and then, for the first time, felt myself safe from my pursuers.
“Scarcely had I audibly congratulated myself on my escape, when the forlorn and wretched situation in which I was, without even a rag to cover me, flashed with all its force upon my imagination. I was perfectly collected, though fully alive to all the danger to which my state exposed me, and had already began to plan my night’s rest in the top of one of the tamarind trees, in order to escape the panthers, which, as I had seen, abounded in these woods, when the idea of theliffas, almost as numerous and equally to be dreaded, excited a shudder of despair.
“I now saw horsemen through the trees, still farther to the east, and determined on reaching them if possible, whether friends or enemies. They were friends. I hailed them with all my might; but the noise and confusion which prevailed, from the cries of those who were falling under the Felatah spears, the cheers of the Arabs rallying and their enemies pursuing, would have drowned all attempts to make myself heard, had not the sheikh’s negro seen and known me at a distance. To this man I was indebted for my second escape: riding up to me, he assisted me to mount behind him, while the arrows whistled over our heads, and we then galloped off to the rear as fast as his wounded horse could carry us. After we had gone a mile or two, and the pursuit had cooled, I was covered with a bornouse; this was a most welcome relief, for the burning sun had already begun to blister my neck and back, and gave me the greatest pain; and had we not soon arrived at water I do not think it possible that I couldhave supported the thirst by which I was being consumed.”
The exciting narrative of travel in the central regions of Africa the young reader may pursue in various volumes, from those describing the adventures of Leo Africanus, in 1513, to the narrative of the intrepid career of Mungo Park, in 1796. From the dangers of travel in the torrid zone the spirit of contrast would direct us to a glance at the perils of adventure in the arctic. Here a pile of books written by men of science await us; but, unfortunately, many of them, like the volumes of Maupertuis and Pallas, though rich in details of natural philosophy or natural history, possess little interest as narratives of adventure. Their authors had little or none of the true heroic spirit of the man of enterprise, who never courts ease when the way of danger is the real path to entire knowledge. The spirit of Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke marks more accurately the proper constitution of the traveller united with the tendencies of the man of science. He had resolved to attempt reaching the North Pole; but having arrived at Enontakis, in latitude 68 degrees, 30 min., 30 sec., N., he was seized with illness, and obliged to return to the south. He thus writes to his mother, from Enontakis:—
“We have found the cottage of a priest in this remote corner of the world, and have been snug with him a few days. Yesterday I launched a balloon, eighteen feet in height, which I had made to attract the natives. You may guess their astonishment when they saw it rise from the earth. Is it not famous to be here withinthe frigid zone, more than two degrees within the arctic, and nearer to the pole than the most northern shores of Iceland? For a long time darkness has been a stranger to us. The sun, as yet, passes not below the horizon, but he dips his crimson visage behind a mountain to the north. This mountain we ascended, and had the satisfaction to see him make his courtesy without setting. At midnight the priest of this place lights his pipe, during three weeks of the year, by means of a burning-glass, from the sun’s rays.”
Of all travellers in the northern regions, though not the most intellectual, the hardiest and most adventurous is Captain Cochrane. He had originally intended to devote himself to African discovery, conceiving himself competent for that arduous undertaking, by experience of the fatigues he had borne in laborious pedestrian journeys through France, Spain, and Portugal, and in Canada. “The plan I proposed to follow,” says he, “was nearly that adopted by Mungo Park, in his first journey—intending to proceed alone, and requiring only to be furnished with the countenance of some constituent part of the government. With this protection, and such recommendation as it would procure me, I would have accompanied the caravans in some servile capacity, nor hesitated even to sell myself as a slave, if that miserable alternative were necessary, to accomplish the object I had in view. In going alone, I relied upon my own individual exertions and knowledge of man, unfettered by the frailties and misconduct of others. I was then, as now, convinced that many people travellingtogether for the purpose of exploring a barbarous country, have the less chance of succeeding; more especially when they go armed, and take with them presents of value. The appearance of numbers must naturally excite the natives to resistance, from motives of jealousy or fear; and the danger would be greatly increased by the hope of plunder.”
The answer he received from the Admiralty being unfavourable, and thinking that a young commander was not likely to be employed in active service, he planned for himself a journey on foot round the globe, as nearly as it could be accomplished by land, intending to cross from northern Asia to America at Behring’s Straits. Captain Cochrane did not realise his first intent, but he tracked the breadth of the entire continent of Asia to Kamtschatka. Hazards and dangers befel him frequently in this enterprise; but he pursued it undauntedly. His perils commenced when he had left St. Petersburg but a few days, and had not reached Novogorod.
“From Tosna my route was towards Linbane,” says our adventurer, “at about the ninth milestone from which I sat down, to smoke a cigar or pipe, as fancy might dictate. I was suddenly seized from behind by two ruffians, whose visages were as much concealed as the oddness of their dress would permit. One of them, who held an iron bar in his hand, dragged me by the collar towards the forest, while the other, with a bayonetted musket, pushed me on in such a manner as to make me move with more than ordinary celerity; a boy, auxiliary to these vagabonds, was stationed on the roadsideto keep a look-out. We had got some sixty or eighty paces into the thickest part of the forest, when I was desired to undress, and having stripped off my trousers and jacket, then my shirt, and finally my shoes and stockings, they proceeded to tie me to a tree. From this ceremony, and from the manner of it, I fully concluded that they intended to try the effect of a musket upon me, by firing at me as they would at a mark. I was, however, reserved for fresh scenes; the villains, with muchsang froid, seated themselves at my feet, and rifled my knapsack and pockets, even cutting out the linings of the clothes in search of bank bills or some other valuable articles. They then compelled me to take at least a pound of black bread, and a glass of rum, poured from a small flask which had been suspended from my neck. Having appropriated my trousers, shirts, stockings, and shoes, as also my spectacles, watch, compass, thermometer, and small pocket sextant, with one hundred and sixty roubles (about seven pounds), they at length released me from the tree, and, at the point of a stiletto, made me swear that I would not inform against them—such, at least, I conjectured to be their meaning, though of their language I understood not a word. Having received my promise, I was again treated by them to bread and rum, and once more fastened to the tree, in which condition they finally abandoned me. Not long after, a boy who was passing heard my cries, and set me at liberty. With the remnant of my apparel, I rigged myself in Scotch Highland fashion, and resumed my route. I had still left me ablue jacket, a flannel waistcoat, and a spare one, which I tied round my waist in such a manner that it reached down to the knees; my empty knapsack was restored to its old place, and I trotted on with even a merry heart.”
He comes up with a file of soldiers in the course of a few miles and is relieved with some food, but declines the offer of clothes. A carriage is also offered to convey him to the next military station. “But I soon discovered,” he continues, “that riding was too cold, and therefore preferred walking, barefooted as I was; and on the following morning I reached Tschduvo, one hundred miles from St. Petersburg.” At Novogorod he is further relieved by the governor, and accepts from him a shirt and trousers.
He reaches Moscow without a renewal of danger, and thence Vladimir and Pogost. In the latter town he cheerfully makes his bed in a style that shows he possessed the spirit of an adventurer in perfection. “Being too jaded to proceed farther,” are his words, “I thought myself fortunate in being able to pass the night in acask. Nor did I think this mode of passing the night a novel one. Often, very often, have I, in the fastnesses of Spain and Portugal, reposed in similar style.” He even selects exposure to the open air for sleep when it is in his power to accept indulgence. “Arrived at Nishney Novogorod, the Baron Bode,” says he, “received me kindly, placing me for board in his own house; while for lodging I preferred the open air of his garden: there, with my knapsack for a pillow, I passed the night more pleasantly than I should have done ona bed of down, which the baron pressed me most sincerely to accept.” A man who thus hardened himself against indulgence could scarcely dread any of the hardships so inevitable in the hazardous course he had marked out for himself.
Accordingly, we find him exciting the wonder of the natives by his hardihood, in the very heart of Siberia. “At Irkutsk,” is his own relation, “in the month of January, with forty degrees of Reaumur, I have gone about, late and early, either for exercise or amusement, to balls or dinners, yet did I never use any other kind of clothing than I do now in the streets of London. Thus my readers must not suppose my situation to have been so desperate. It is true, the natives felt surprised, and pitied my apparently forlorn and hopeless situation, not seeming to consider that, when the mind and body are in constant motion, the elements can have little effect upon the person. I feel confident that most of the miseries of human life are brought about by want of a solid education—of firm reliance on a bountiful and ever-attendant Providence—of a spirit of perseverance—of patience under fatigue and privations, and a resolute determination to hold to the point of duty, never to shrink while life retains a spark, or while ‘a shot is in the locker,’ as sailors say. Often, indeed, have I felt myself in difficult and trying circumstances, from cold, or hunger, or fatigue; but I may affirm, with gratitude, that I have never felt happier than even in the encountering of these difficulties.” He remarks, soon afterwards, that he has never seen his constitutionequalled; but the young reader will remember that the undaunted adventurer has strikingly shown us how this excellent constitution was preserved from injury by shunning effeminacy.
Yet our traveller’s superlative constitution is severely tested when he reaches the country of the Yakuti, a tribe of Siberian Tartars. He crosses a mountain range, and halts, with the attendants he has now found the means to engage, for the night, at the foot of an elevation, somewhat sheltered from the cold north wind. “The first thing on my arrival,” he relates, “was to unload the horses, loosen their saddles or pads, take the bridles out of their mouths, and tie them to a tree in such a manner that they could not eat. The Yakuti then with their axes proceeded to fell timber, while I and the Cossack, with our lopatkas or wooden spades, cleared away the snow, which was generally a couple of feet deep. We then spread branches of the pine tree, to fortify us from the damp or cold earth beneath us; a good fire was now soon made, and each bringing a leathern bag from the baggage furnished himself with a seat. We then put the kettle on the fire, and soon forgot the sufferings of the day. At times the weather was so cold that we were obliged to creep almost into the fire; and as I was much worse off than the rest of the party for warm clothing, I had recourse to every stratagem I could devise to keep my blood in circulation. It was barely possible to keep one side of the body from freezing, while the other might be said to be roasting. Upon the whole, I passed the night tolerably well, although Iwas obliged to get up five or six times to take a walk or run, for the benefit of my feet. The following day, at thirty miles, we again halted in the snow, when I made a horse-shoe fire, which I found had the effect of keeping every part of me alike warm, and I actually slept well without any other covering than my clothes thrown over me; whereas, before, I had only the consolation of knowing that if I was in a freezing state with one half of my body, the other was meanwhile roasting to make amends.”
Captain Cochrane’s constitution had so much of the power of adaptation to circumstances, that he was enabled to make a meal even with the savagest tribes. A deer had been shot, and the Yakuti began to eat it uncooked! “Of course,” says he, “I had the most luxurious part presented to me, being the marrow of the fore-legs. I did not find it disagreeable, though eaten raw and warm from life; in a frozen state I should consider it a great delicacy. The animal was the size of a good calf, weighing about two hundred pounds. Such a quantity of meat may serve four or five good Yakuti for a single meal, with whom it is ever famine or feast, gluttony or starvation.”
The captain’s account of the feeding powers of the Yakuti surpasses, indeed, anything to be found in the narratives of travellers which are proverbial for wonder. “At Tabalak I had a pretty good specimen,” he continues, “of the appetite of a child, whose age could not exceed five years. I had observed it crawling on the floor, and scraping up with its thumb the tallow-greasewhich fell from a lighted candle, and I inquired in surprise whether it proceeded from hunger or liking of the fat. I was told from neither, but simply from the habit in both Yakuti and Tungousi of eating wherever there is food, and never permitting anything that can be eaten to be lost. I gave the child a candle made of the most impure tallow, a second, and a third—and all were devoured with avidity. The steersman then gave him several pounds of sour frozen butter; this also he immediately consumed. Lastly, a large piece of yellow soap—all went the same road; but as I was convinced that the child would continue to gorge as long as it could receive anything, I begged my companion to desist as I had done. As to the statement of what a man can or will eat, either as to quality or quantity, I am afraid it would be quite incredible. In fact, there is nothing in the way of fish or meat, from whatever animal, however putrid or unwholesome, but they will devour with impunity; and the quantity only varies from what they have to what they can get. I have repeatedly seen a Yakut or a Tungouse devour forty pounds of meat in a day. The effects are very observable upon them, for, from thin and meagre-looking men, they will become perfectly pot-bellied. I have seen three of these gluttons consume a reindeer at one meal.”
These doings of the Siberian Tartars, our young readers will have rightly judged, however, are not among the most praiseworthy or dignified of the “Triumphs of Enterprise;” and we turn, with a sense of relief, to other scenes of adventure.
The grand mountain range of the Andes, or Cordilleras, with its rugged and barren peaks and volcanoes, and destitution of human habitants, sometimes for scores of miles in the traveller’s route, has afforded a striking theme for many writers of their own adventures in South America. Mr. Temple, a traveller in 1825, affords us some exciting views of the perils of his journey from Peru to Buenos Ayres.
In the afternoon of one of these perilous days he had to ascend and descend the highest mountain he had ever yet crossed. After winding for more than two hours up its rugged side, and precisely in the most terrifying spot, the baggage-mule, which was in front, suddenly stopped. “And well it might, poor little wretch, after scrambling with its burden up such fatiguing flights of craggy steps!” exclaims this benevolent-minded traveller; “the narrowness of the path at this spot did not allow room to approach the animal to unload and give it rest. On one side was the solid rock, which drooped over our heads in a half-arch; on the other, a frightful abyss, of not less than two hundred feet perpendicular. Patience was, indeed, requisite here, but the apprehension was, that some traveller or courier might come in the contrary direction, and, as the sun was setting, the consequences could not fail of proving disastrous to either party. At one time, I held a council to deliberate on the prudence of freeing the passage by shooting the mule, and letting it roll, baggage and all, to the bottom. In this I was opposed by the postilion, though another as well as myself was of opinion that it was the only method ofrescuing us from our critical situation before nightfall. I never felt so perplexed in my life. We were all useless, helpless, and knew not what to do. After upwards of half an hour—or, apprehension might add a few minutes to this dubious and truly nervous pause—the mule, of its own accord, moved on slowly for about twenty yards, and stopped again; then proceeded, then stopped; and thus, after two hours’ further ascent, we gradually reached the summit. Two or three times I wished, for safety’s sake, to alight, but actually I had not room to do so upon the narrow edge of the tremendous precipice on my left.”
He was less fortunate in his return over the mountains of Tarija. “Cruel was the sight,” says he, “to see us toiling up full fifteen miles continued steep to the summit of the Cordillera, that here forms a ridge round the south-western extremity of the province of Tarija; but crueller by far to behold the wretched, wretched mule, that slipped on the edge of the precipice, and—away! exhibiting ten thousand summersaults, round, round, round! down, down, down! nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand fathoms deep!—certainly not one yard less, according to the scale by which I measured the chasm in my wonder-struck imagination, while I stood in the stirrups straining forward over the ears of my horse (which trembled with alarm), and viewed the microscopic diminution of the mule, as it revolved with accelerated motion to the bottom, carrying with it our whole grand store of provision.”
Here they were obliged to leave the poor animal toits fate, which there was no doubt would be that of being devoured by condors. But a far more serious accident befel Mr. Temple a few days after this. A favourite horse that he had purchased on his journey to Potosi got loose, and galloping off after a herd of his own species speedily disappeared, and was never recovered. His apostrophe to this animal is a specimen of fine benevolent sentiment. “My horse,” said I to myself, “my best horse, my favourite horse, my companion, my friend, for so long a time, on journeys of so many hundred miles, carrying me up and down mountains, along the edge of precipices, across rivers and torrents, where the safety of the rider so often depended solely on the worthiness of the animal—to lose thee now in a moment of so much need, in a manner so unexpected, and so provokingly accidental, aggravated my loss. The constant care I took of thee proves the value I set on thy merits. At the end of many a wearisome journey, accommodation and comfort for thee were invariably my first consideration, let mine be what they might. Not even the severity of the past night could induce me to deprive thee of thy rug for my own gratification. And must I now suddenly say farewell? Then farewell, my trusty friend! A thousand dollars are in that portmanteau: had I lost every one of them, they must, indeed, have occasioned regret; but never could they have excited such a feeling of sorrow as thou hast, my best, my favourite horse—farewell!”
If we wished to depicture the earth as it must have appeared to primeval travellers, Humboldt, the mostsagacious of adventurers, seems to assure us that South America approaches nearest to such a picture. “In this part of the new continent,” he remarks, “surrounded by dense forests of boundless extent, we almost accustomed ourselves to regard men as not being essential to the order of nature. The earth is loaded with plants, and nothing impedes their free development. An immense layer of mould manifests the uninterrupted action of organic powers. The crocodiles and the boas are masters of the river; the jaguar, the pecari, the dante, and the monkeys traverse the forest without fear and without danger: there they dwell as in an ancient inheritance. This aspect of animated nature, in which man is nothing, has something in it strange and sad. To this we reconcile ourselves with difficulty on the ocean and amid the sands of Africa, though in these scenes, where nothing recals to mind our fields, our woods, and our streams, we are less astonished at the vast solitude through which we pass. Here, in a fertile country, adorned with eternal verdure, we seek in vain the traces of the power of man; we seem to be transported into a world different from that which gave us birth.”
Of the suffering to be encountered by adventurers in these regions, we are assured, however, by Humboldt, the chief source does not consist in the presence of crocodiles or serpents, jaguars or monkeys. The dread of these sinks into nothing when compared to theplaga de la moscas—the torment of insects. “However accustomed,” says Humboldt, “you may be to endure pain without complaint—however lively an interest you maytake in the object of your researches—it is impossible not to be constantly disturbed by the musquetoes, zaucudoes, jejeus, and tempraneroes that cover the face and hands, pierce the clothes with their long sucker in the shape of a needle, and getting into the mouth and nostrils set you coughing and sneezing whenever you attempt to speak in the open air. I doubt whether there be a country on earth where man is exposed to more cruel torments in the rainy seasons, when the lower strata of the air to the height of fifteen or twenty feet are filled with venomous insects like a condensed vapour.”
This terrific account of the American mosquito is confirmed by Mr. Hood, one of the companions of Captain Franklin, in the intrepid attempt to reach the North Pole by overland journey. “We had sometimes procured a little rest,” he observes, “by closing the tent and burning wood or flashing gunpowder within, the smoke driving the musquitoes into the crannies of the ground. But this remedy was now ineffectual, though we employed it so perseveringly as to hazard suffocation. They swarmed under our blankets, goring us with their envenomed trunks and steeping our clothes in blood. We rose at daylight in a fever, and our misery was unmitigated during our whole stay. The food of the mosquito is blood, which it can extract by penetrating the hide of a buffalo; and if it is not disturbed it gorges itself so as to swell its body into a transparent globe. The wound does not swell, like that of the African mosquito, but it is infinitely more painful; and when multiplied an hundred-fold, and continued for so manysuccessive days, it becomes an evil of such magnitude that cold, famine, and every other concomitant of an inhospitable climate, must yield pre-eminence to it. It chases the buffalo to the plains, irritating him to madness; and the reindeer to the sea-shore, from which they do not return till the scourge has ceased.”
Captain Back, whose Arctic Land Expedition has made his name memorable, confirms these accounts. After describing the difficulties of himself and party in dragging their baggage and provisions, and even their canoe, up high, steep, and rugged ridges, over swamps of thick stunted firs, and open spaces barren and desolate, on which “crag was piled on crag to the height of two thousand feet from the base,” he adds these descriptive sentences of the insect plague: “The laborious duty which had been thus performed was rendered doubly severe by the combined attack of myriads of sandflies and mosquitoes, which made our faces stream with blood. There is certainly no form of wretchedness among those to which the chequered life of a traveller is exposed, at once so great and so humiliating, as the torture inflicted by these puny blood-suckers. To avoid them is impossible; and as for defending himself, though for a time he may go on crushing by thousands, he cannot long maintain the unequal conflict, so that at last, subdued by pain and fatigue, he throws himself in despair with his face to the earth, and, half suffocated in his blanket, groans away a few hours of sleepless rest.”
The swarms of sandflies, calledbrulotsby the Canadians, it appears by the following account of CaptainBack, are as annoying as the mosquitoes:—“As we dived into the confined and suffocating chasms, or waded through the close swamps, they rose in clouds, actually darkening the air. To see or speak was equally difficult, for they rushed at every undefended part and fixed their poisonous fangs in an instant. Our faces streamed with blood as if leeches had been applied, and there was a burning and irritating pain, followed by immediate inflammation, and producing giddiness which almost drove us mad. Whenever we halted, which the nature of the country compelled us to do often, the men—even the Indians—threw themselves on their faces, and moaned with pain and agony. My arms being less encumbered I defended myself in some degree by waving a branch in each hand; but, even with this and the aid of a veil and stout leather gloves, I did not escape without severe punishment. For the time I thought the tiny plagues worse even than mosquitoes.”
The ardour which can bear a man onward through difficulties and annoyances of this nature is admirable; but love is united with our admiration when Capt. Back gives the following testimony to the benevolence of Sir John Franklin:—
“It was the custom of Sir John Franklin never to kill a fly; and though teased by them beyond expression, especially when engaged in taking observations, he would quietly desist from his work and patiently blow the half-gorged intruders from his hands—‘the world was wide enough for both.’ This was jocosely remarked upon by Akaitcho and the four or five Indians who accompaniedhim. But the impression, it seems,” continues Captain Back, “had sunk deep, for on Manfelly’s seeing me fill my tent with smoke, and then throw open the front and beat the sides all round with leafy branches to drive out the stupified pests before I went to rest, he could not refrain from expressing his surprise that I should be so unlike ‘the old chief,’ who would not destroy so much as a single mosquito.” So true it is that the real hero, he for whom danger has no terrors, has the kindest and gentlest nature!
Ostrich