Page:A narrative of travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro.djvu/245

 1 85 1.] VARIETY OF FISHES. 213

of these beautiful and interesting plants, as they would then arrive in a good season of the year.

Sao Jeronymo is celebrated for its abundance of fish, but at this season they are in all places difficult to take. However, we had on most days enough for breakfast and supper, and scarcely a day passed but I had some new and strange kinds to add to my collection. The small fishes of these rivers are in wonderful variety, and the large proportion of the species here, different from those I had observed in the Rio Negro, led me to hope that in the upper parts of the river I should find them almost entirely new.

Here we were tolerably free from chegoes, but had another plague, far worse, because more continual. We had suffered more or less from piums in all parts of the river, but here they were in such countless myriads, as to render it almost impos- sible to sit down during the day. It was most extraordinary that previously to this year they had never been known in the river. Senhor L. and the Indians all agreed, that a piurh had hitherto been a rarity, and now they were as plentiful as in their very worst haunts. Having long discarded the use of stockings in these " altitudes," and not anticipating any such pest, I did not bring a pair, which would have been useful to defend my feet and ankles in the house, as the pium, unlike the mosquito, does not penetrate any covering, however thin.

As it was, the torments I suffered when skinning a bird or drawing a fish, can scarcely be imagined by the unexperienced. My feet were so thickly covered with the little blood-spots produced by their bites, as to be of a dark purplish-red colour, and much swelled and inflamed. My hands suffered similarly, but in a less degree, being more constantly in motion. The only means of taking a little rest in the day, was by wrapping up hands and feet in a blanket. The Indians close their houses, as these insects do not bite in the dark, but ours having no door, we could not resort to this expedient. Whence these pests could thus suddenly appear in such vast numbers is a mystery which I am quite unable to explain.

When we had been here about a week, some Indians who had been sent to Guia with a small cargo of farinha, returned and brought us news of two deaths, which had taken place in the village since we had left. One was of Joze, a little Indian