Note 2 — Chapter IV · IN MID-ORINOQUIA

There was that ever-present pest—whose name is not legion, but billion—on which travelers in South America have exhausted their supply of adjectives in the vain attempt adequately to express their sentiments. I refer to what the Spaniard has so aptly called the plaga—the plague—the cloud of mosquitoes of many species that constantly torment the traveler, and give him no rest night or day. We had read what various writers on the equinoctial regions had to say of the murderous onslaughts of the mosquito from the time of the early missionaries down to our own, and such reading was far from calculated to reassure one who was about to form a more intimate acquaintance of the plaga in question.2