Note 2 — Chapter IV · IN MID-ORINOQUIA
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The plaga, as understood by the natives, has special reference to the insects known to them as mosquitoes, zancudos and jejenes. What they call mosquitoes we call gnats. The zancudo is our mosquito. The jejen is a small fly whose bite is quite as painful as that of the zancudo. Sometimes the term zancudo is applied to all these pests indiscriminately.
Besides these insects, that are often the cause of much suffering to the traveler in low woodlands, there are others that are sometimes included under the general designation of the plaga. These are a very small red insect known as the coloradito, and the nigua, or jigger—pulex penetrans—which, on account of the misery they occasion, are often more dreaded than serpents or the wild beasts of the forest. They usually bury themselves under the toe nails, where they lay their eggs. If not immediately removed they cause painful and often dangerous sores. It is related of Sir Robert Schomburgk that a negress once extracted from his feet no fewer than eighty-three jiggers at one sitting.
The coloradito, called by the French bête-rouge, and in some places known as the red tick, is almost invisible to the naked eye. It is found everywhere in the equatorial lowlands, especially during the rainy season. Its bite causes an intolerable itching, and when one has been exposed to the combined attacks of many of these microscopic insects, the result is as painful as the burning produced by the poisoned tunic of Nessus. Schomburgk, in describing his personal experience, declares that “the bite of this insect drives by day the perspiration of anguish from every pore, and at night makes one’s hammock resemble the gridiron on which St. Lawrence was roasted.” Simson informs us that the intense irritation produced by the bites of the bête-rouge at times drove him almost to the verge of madness. “Notwithstanding every effort of self-control,” he writes, “to bear the itching sensation, I have many times awoke in the night to find myself sitting up in the bed, and literally tearing the skin off my legs, where most of the insects collect, with my nails.” Mosquitoes and the zancudos are bad enough, but, as a pest, the coloradito is far worse. Truth to tell, our greatest suffering in the tropics came from the coloradito, but it was in great measure due to our lack of precaution. Had we exercised more care we should have avoided many painful hours. The best way to allay the pain is to rub the part affected with rum or lemon juice.
Padre Gumilla assures us that leaving the Gulf of Paria and entering the Orinoco, or any of the tropical rivers, is tantamount to engaging in a fierce and continued warfare, day and night, with countless insects of all kinds. Of certain mosquitoes, he tells us, their sharp, uninterrupted noise is more to be dreaded than their piercing proboscis.
So trying and difficult did Raleigh consider a voyage up the Orinoco that he declared it a task “fitter for boies,” than for men of mature years, although, when he visited Guiana, he was nearly three lustra younger than was the author of the present work when he made the journey herein described. ↑