Page:The naturalist on the River Amazons 1863 v1.djvu/332

 and surly answers to our questions, and so were glad to depart.

We crossed the river at this point, and entered a narrow channel which penetrates the interior of the island of Tupinambarána, and leads to a chain of lakes called the Lagos de Cararaucú. A furious current swept along the coast, eating into the crumbling earthy banks, and strewing the river with débris of the forest. The mouth of the channel lies about twenty-five miles from Villa Nova; the entrance is only about forty yards broad, but it expands, a short distance inland, into a large sheet of water. We suffered terribly from insect pests during the twenty-four hours we remained here. At night it was quite impossible to sleep for mosquitos; they fell upon us by myriads, and without much piping came straight at our faces as thick as raindrops in a shower. The men crowded into the cabins, and then tried to expel the pests by the smoke from burnt rags, but it was of little avail, although we were half suffocated during the operation. In the daytime the Motúca, a much larger and more formidable fly than the mosquito, insisted upon levying his tax of blood. We had been tormented by it for many days past, but this place seemed to be its metropolis. The species has been described by Perty, the author of the Entomological portion of Spix and Martius' travels, under the name of Hadaus lepidotus. It is a member of the Tabanidæ family, and indeed is closely related to the Hæmatopota pluvialis, a brown fly which haunts the borders of woods in summer time in England. The Motúca is of a bronzed-black colour; its proboscis is formed of a bundle