CHAPTER VII.

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....