THE KINGDOM OF BEELZEBUB.
On our return to camp we cut enough alders to make a fire, and Porter set
about cooking a pan of deer’s meat in the lee of a rock. While we were
eating this, although we sat upon the shore of the lake with a strong
breeze blowing, the mosquitoes got to their deadly work, settling in
scores upon the sides of our faces which were turned from the wind. I
suppose we were tired with our long pack, for, speaking for myself, their
persecutions seemed very hard to bear with equanimity, and once again I
was reminded of the smut in the eye which destroys in the most receptive
nature all the glory of any landscape. Here were we, on the margin of a
beautiful, rock-bound lake in a virgin land, the Northern Lights dancing
and waving in the heavens, the few voices of the wilderness around us;
in a land where there were caribou; in such an environment, in fact, as
Hardy and I had discussed, dreamed of and looked forward to for many a
day, and yet these loathsome insects left us no feeling but irritation
and the dread of a sleepless night.
Worse was to come, for, to add to our discomfort, a shower blew up with
the wind and soon heavy rain began. In the dark we crept under the
tent-sheet, rolled boulders upon the edges, and, with the cheeriness of
men on a forlorn hope, we—as the quaint saying has it—addressed ourselves
to slumber. But address as carefully as we might, we could not attain
to that blessed condition. For the chill of the descending rain had no
effect upon the enemy, and it was very close under the canvas, so that
just as one of us was growing drowsy, the other—Porter had retired with
his own piece of canvas to an overhanging rock—driven beyond endurance
would beat away the mosquitoes, and both would be broad awake again.
We tried devious methods to relieve the situation. I covered my face
with a veil, but could get no clear air through it, so thickly did the
mosquitoes settle; I wrapped my head and shoulders in a blanket and
was soon in an unbearable Turkish bath; I daubed myself with Stockholm
tar and oil, but dissolved by the heat, it ran into my eyes. After an
interminable period darkness at last began to fade, and I fell asleep.
When I awoke, the rain had cleared off, and Hardy, who was fishing
from the bank, had landed two _namaycush_. One of these we fried for
breakfast, after which Porter started for Canoe Camp for a second pack,
while Hardy and I took the rifle and went off for a day’s hunting.
Climbing the sandy ridges along which we had travelled on the previous
day, we almost at once sighted a small caribou, advancing at a rapid
pace from the westward; above the wretched creature’s head revolved and
towered the usual pillar of mosquitoes. It was walking quickly up-wind,
evidently with the intention of keeping its persecutors from settling.
We could have cut off and killed this deer, but as Porter on his return
journey was to carry in some more meat from the caribou shot the day
before, there seemed no need for doing so, so we permitted it to pass on
its way in peace, while we turned our steps towards some rolling stony
hills, among the heights of which we thought we might find a good stag.
[Illustration: Looking Westward.]
[Illustration: “Cooking our Mid-day Meal beside some upland water.”]
[Illustration: “We threw ourselves on our faces to avoid the mosquitoes.”
(Note the swarms of mosquitoes on the clothing).]
After the rain, the sun had come out, and on that day the climax of
our sufferings from the mosquitoes was reached. We wore veils, but the
walking was very rough, and I, at any rate, found that through the gauze
I continually misjudged distances, so I cut eyeholes in my veil, and
through these openings the mosquitoes poured in. Also I had only one
glove, as the other had been lost at the time of our canoe accident on
the Fraser, and though I covered my hand with handkerchiefs it was soon
swollen to an astonishing extent.
Here and there as we walked, we found the tracks of deer and the
sheddings of their winter coats; at one point a road several yards wide
had been cut by their hoofs, but on this the tracks were mostly a month
old. Still we were continually seeing fresher signs, and, as the hills
closed in about us, we knew that we might come upon game at any moment.
Indeed, as we topped a ridge a large doe or young stag leaped up in front
of us and stood for a moment within fifty yards before he or she fled
over the hill, but the horns were, of course, quite worthless and so
Hardy did not shoot.
All the morning we wandered on, sometimes sitting and spying vast
expanses of wilderness, across which black mirages gathered and faded,
and with every hour the mosquitoes seemed to increase in numbers. Up to
this time Hardy had borne their onslaughts with admirable patience, but
even he felt that their untiring ferocity had on this day touched the
limit.
Lest my readers should imagine that we were somewhat thin-skinned to be
thus ruffled by the forays of the “flies,” as they are usually called in
the Labrador, I shall adduce the testimony of two or three travellers.
Giving, as is due, _place aux dames_, I will cite Mrs. Hubbard, who
writes:—
“The big Labrador bulldogs (flies as large as wasps) were out in force
that day, as well as the tiny sand-flies. One thing we had to be thankful
for, was that there were no mosquitoes. The men told me that there are
never many where the bulldogs are plentiful, as these big fellows eat the
mosquitoes. I did not see them doing it, but certain it is that when they
were about in large numbers there were very few mosquitoes. They bit hard
and made the blood run. They were so big and such noisy creatures that
their horrible buzzing sent the cold chills chasing over me whenever they
made an attack. Still, they were not so bad as mosquitoes.”
And again:
“The flies, which in the Nascaupee country had been such a trial to me,
had not driven the men to use veils except on rare occasions, but now
they were being worn even out on the lake, where we were still tormented.
Backs and hats were brown with the vicious wretches, where they would
cling waiting for a lull in the wind to swarm about our heads in such
numbers that even their war-song made one shiver and creep. They were
larger by far than the Jersey mosquitoes and their bite was like the
touch of a live coal. Sometimes in the tent a continual patter on the
roof, as they flew against it, sounded like gentle rain.”
The great American naturalist, Alpheus S. Packard, who visited the
Labrador with a view to studying insect life, and to whose efforts such
knowledge as is possessed on the question is nearly all due, is said on
one occasion to have been driven out of the country by the mosquitoes
and black-flies. But of course neither Mrs. Hubbard nor Packard visited
the high ground, where, in our experience, the mosquitoes were far more
numerous and savage than in the river valleys.
It is a well-known fact that all sub-Arctic lands are scourged by
the Grey Plague, and whatever their faults they have at least been
responsible for some vigorous word-pictures. For instance, Sir Henry
Pottinger in his delightful book on Norway, “Flood, Fell and Forest,”
speaks feelingly and informatively on the subject. While crossing the
high fjeld on his way to the Tana River, he writes as follows:—
“The horses are a distressing sight. From nose to tail, from hoof to
withers, their unfortunate bodies are covered with what might be taken
at a casual glance for a grey blanket clothing, but reveals itself to
inspection as a textile mass of seething insect life, so closely set that
you could not anywhere put the point of your finger on the bare hide. And
yet, quivering all over, stamping, shaking, lashing their tails, they
continue to graze, perhaps conscious how much fuel is required to replace
the life that is being incessantly drained from them. It is well that we
have not a dog with us.
“In defiance of the vicious swarms, we again endeavour to carry out our
notion of camp-life, light a fire, and meditate cooking breakfast and
making tea; but flesh and blood are not equal to the task. As John leans
over the camp-kettle his sight of it is obscured by the mosquitoes on his
veil, I can at any moment kill the shape of my hand in them by slapping
him on the back. We therefore abandon the idea of warm food and drink,
and rousing one of the men, who, beyond unloading the horses, have no
conception of making themselves useful, send him to bring back from a
neighbouring drift a can full of snow, and concoct with mingled lemon and
cognac a deliciously refreshing brew of weak iced punch.
“Then we haul out our mosquito-nets, packed with some forethought
uppermost in the saddle-bags, and lying down beneath them, gloomily
munch dry biscuits and slices of cold sausage. Now a mosquito-net is an
excellent defence as long as it can be suspended over a bed and kept from
touching the body, but when in contact with the latter it affords little
or no protection, for the mosquito can with ease insert his proboscis
through the fine meshes, and by perseverance reach the flesh of his
victim.
“That I have to dwell so much on this distasteful theme is wearisome to
me, and must be so to the reader, but one might as well try to ignore
the presence of vehicles and foot-passengers in the streets of London as
that of mosquitoes on the Arctic fjeld. I have spoken with those who have
had experience of the pests in all parts of the world as well as in that
region, and for numbers, size, and venom they all give the palm to the
demons of Finmark and Lapland. For such small creatures they exhibit an
astonishing amount of character and diabolical intelligence. They will
dash through smoke like a fox-hound through a bull-finch, creep under
a veil or wrist-band like a ferret into a rabbit-hole, and when they
can neither dash nor creep, will bide their time with the pertinacious
cunning of Red Indians. We wore, as I have said, stout dogskin gloves,
articles with which they could not have had much previous acquaintance,
and yet they would follow each other by hundreds in single file up and
down the seams, trying every stitch in the hope of detecting a flaw;
every inch of the sewing was outlined by their unbroken ranks. Unluckily
our gloves were not gauntlets, and in carrying the gun there was half
an inch of exposed flesh, which became fearfully bitten. By the time we
reached Karasjok I counted over sixty separately distinguishable bites,
and there may well have been many more on that small area of cuticle on
my right wrist, despite my endeavour to shield it with strips of wet
linen; it was swollen to nearly the size of my forearm. It may well
be that only the good condition of our blood, and constant exercise,
inducing free perspiration, saved us from an attack of fever.
“The problem presents itself, Why are the vermin so horribly bloodthirsty
and so perfectly formed for sucking blood? It is one of the great
mysteries of creation. On the uninhabited fjeld of Finmark they must, as
a rule, exist on vegetable diet, the chance of blood so rarely occurs;
there is no local life except a few birds with impervious feathers. In
the summer-time the Lap drives his reindeer to the sea. No native is fool
enough to cross the fjeld at that season unless he be driven thereto by
the rare call of duty, or tempted by the gold of a mad Englishman, and
there may be, at the outside, half-a-dozen such madmen in half a century.
In winter when the reindeer sledge can skim merrily over the universal
waste of snow, disregarding the boundaries of land and water when the
Tana itself becomes a solid highway, when the priest and merchant return
for the church service, school, and market held at Karasjok, travellers
may not be so uncommon; but whatever other peril or hardship they
undergo, they are at least free from the Grey Terror. In the valleys
and by the rivers, that is, in the permanently inhabited parts of
northern Norway, the mosquito plague can at times be bad enough, but
in its hideous redundance it exists only on the bare fjeld, a primeval
and enduring curse, inexplicably developed to its utmost in a region
seemingly the most unsuitable for its effective working: the less chance
of blood, the more bloodsuckers. That this should be so is a mercy, but
my point is the mysteriousness of the whole thing. One thing alone is
to me a greater mystery: naturalists affirm that it is _only the female
mosquito_ which bites! I can but say that I have never, in that case, met
with the male insect. But what a terrible opening for a general libel on
the fair sex does this affirmation afford to the cynic and satirist.”
To turn to a later day, we find that the breed which garrisons the
country has grown no less malignant. Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne in his racy and
interesting story of “Through Arctic Lapland” gives his experiences
amongst them.
“At Pokka, Hayter was in small temper for food. The bites of the
preceding night were giving him the most abominable pain. From scalp to
heels he had no sound square inch on all his skin. The whole of his body
was puffed and reddened, and each bite was its own centre of irritation.
When he scratched himself he bled, and he had to scratch....”
Later he writes again:—
“We carried the marks of their work written on us in ugly letters. Our
arms were swollen from wrist to elbow, so that they fitted tight in the
coat sleeve; our hands were puffed up like boxing-gloves; we were bitten,
bitten, bitten all over, through corduroy, under boot-laces, under hair.
The scraps of paper in my pockets on which I had been scribbling notes,
were splodged with blood till they were unreadable, and in this torment
we had been marching for ten consecutive hours before the dew came and
brought relief.”
And finally Mr. Hyne gives this powerful picture of a night spent at
Ivalomati:—
“But did we get so much as a doze? I fancy not. We lay there motionless
upon the hay, with our lower extremities hidden from the insects by the
wet blankets, and our heads roof to roof beneath the odorous tent; and
the sweat dripped out of us at every pore. A midnight sun was blazing
high above the hut, and the air in the room was like that of an oven. The
heat under the tent was stifling. Ever and again first one mosquito, and
then another, and then a third, would get inside our defences, and we
would have to bestir ourselves to slay them.... We passed that night in
a condition bordering on frenzy, and let not those who merely know the
mosquito in Africa, in India, and the Americas, judge us too hardly when
I say that at times we wished most heartily we had never set foot in so
detestable a country. Cold, we could have endured; privation, we were
prepared for; but this horrible stew of flies ground upon the nerves till
we were scarcely responsible for our actions.”
But to return to Labrador.
It may be that I have dwelt upon our sufferings and their cause at
too great length, but in defence I must declare that it is generally
believed the mosquito of the Labrador is _facile princeps_ in numbers,
in bloodthirstiness and in the tactics of warfare. Be that as it may, at
about two o’clock on the day of which I write, we were sitting on a knoll
surrounded in every sense of the word by more mosquitoes than I have ever
seen before or hope ever to see again. Our sealskin boots were covered
with crawling masses, and where they were tied in under the knee the
mosquitoes drove their lances through the firm-woven tweed with maddening
effect.
At length we were once more stung into continuing our hunt, but after
proceeding about two hundred yards, we stopped again, and in the hope of
driving off some of our pursuers, we kindled a great fire of moss, which
threw up huge gouts of dun-coloured smoke. In this we sat, but though I
held my boot in the midst of it only a few of the mosquitoes seemed to
really mind its acrid pungency, the majority clung on.
At this distance of time, the incidents of that day are only cause for
laughter, but in the thick of the struggle laughter was impossible, and
presently by mutual consent we turned and made an up-wind detour back
to camp. There we determined to draw the tent-sheet over a rock, creep
inside its shelter and light our pipes. We thought we might thus in some
degree escape from torment.
As we walked along, I remember we agreed that no foreign army would ever
invade the interior of Labrador. Indeed I do not believe that a mass of
men could bear a week of it in the height of summer, the Grey Legions
would conquer the bravest and best disciplined army in the world.
I will now give an extract from my diary.
_Aug. 13th._ Cold and bleak, but flies in every sheltered spot. Went
again for a walk to look for a stag. Saw mosquitoes. What these
mosquitoes are is indescribable. They give _no_ rest, _no_ peace, day and
night they go on and on and on. I think a man totally unprotected would
be killed by them in a very short space of time. I remember reading
somewhere that the Indians in the old days used to kill their Eskimo
prisoners by exposing them naked to the swarms of mosquitoes. It would
be difficult to imagine anything more fiendish. At this moment I can
hardly write, and have certainly killed a score on my hand since I wrote
these few lines. Then one cannot wash without an attack that is almost
insupportable. At night one has to sleep in a wet bed, since one dare not
choose a sheltered place or no sleep would be possible because of the
mosquitoes everywhere. Where one’s clothes are drawn tight they pierce
through even two thicknesses of cloth and all along the seams. One is a
mass of bites, tortured by lack of sleep, wracked with nerves.
_Aug. 14th._ Sunday. Hardly any sleep, mosquitoes. At this moment there
are thousands under the tent-sheet and, as usual, it is raining. Nearly
demented. (Later.) Since I wrote the above the wind has gone round to the
north-west and cleared out the flies in part. It is cold, but one must
either freeze or be torn to pieces by the mosquitoes. Just under the lee
of every ridge there are any quantity of them in ambush, and you have
only to get out of the gale for them to crowd on you, and their bites
hurt in the cold. It mists and rains. I have never been so uncomfortable
on any trip in my life, also _inter alia_ what with the cold, damp, wet
and flies, I fear everything in the film line will be ruined. Of course
it is something to have come across this bare treeless tableland, as well
as to have investigated the valley of the Fraser, but of big stags I see
very little promise....