INSECT PLAGUES.
Who can war with thousands wage?—PERCY’S _Reliques of Ancient Poetry_.
As to the insect plagues of Egypt, I found the mosquitoes alone annoying.
Had I been in the country in the summer or autumn, my experience would,
I have no doubt, have been different. And as to the mosquitoes, I found
them seriously annoying only at Alexandria. At one time I had my face,
hands, and ankles very badly bitten. My own carelessness, however, was
the cause of this, for I was at that time in the habit of reading and
writing at night with open windows. This was giving my bloodthirsty
assailants, who had been attracted by the candle, every facility. They
had free ingress, and found their victim off his guard and exposed to
their attacks. At Zech’s hotel at Cairo, I found no mosquitoes. In going
up the river I had a _chasse_ every night, before I turned in, to clear
off the few that might be in my berth. I generally found one or two.
Herodotus mentions the use by the Egyptians of the mosquito net.
In a Belgravian hotel I have been badly bitten, and by a larger, blacker,
and more venomous kind of mosquito than those that forced themselves on
my notice in Egypt. On the same occasion I saw ladies who were suffering
so much from their attacks that they were obliged to have recourse to
medical treatment. This ferocious species is supposed to have been
imported to Thames-side in some one or other of the earlier stages of
insect existence, through the medium of the water-tanks of our West
African palm-oil traders.
It is curious that fleas, which so abound in Egypt, are not found in
Nubia. Many insects are very local: but one is surprised at finding such
a cosmopolite as the flea conspicuously absent in a country, which might
have been supposed especially adapted to his manners and customs. In
Egypt, as has been the case elsewhere, I often felt industrious fleas at
work upon me; but I am not aware that a flea ever yet succeeded in biting
me. Others I heard complaining much of them.
The boat in which I went up the river had just been painted, and so I
saw nothing in it of the Egyptian bug; but I heard that they abounded in
other boats. I found the Hotel d’Europe, at Alexandria, and Zech’s, at
Cairo, quite free from them.
The domestic fly is about as troublesome in Egypt in winter as it is in
this country in autumn.