Year: 1878

A reporter of the st. Louis Globe.
Democrat has had an interview with a
Captain Barge, the account of which is
as follows:


Young man, you don't know what
a mosquito is. You have, maybe, been
worried by a single mosquito, and
thought of doing awful things. Maybe
you boarded where they were too eco
nomical to put up nets, or maybe you
have been fishing in some of these Illi-
nois lakes; but without you have been
at the tropics, or up the Missouri River,
you are baby when it comes down to
mosquitoes. Up there you get them in
every style and shape. Some of them
are pretty and some of them ugly some
are big and some are little, but all the
same-big, little, black, brown, red, or
green-they have agreed upon one thing
they all bite, and they bite hard. It
is always considered necessary up there
to wear a net over the face and to glove
the hands. That is no protection this
summer. A new brand of mosquitoes
the boys call them skeeters was in
troduced this summer by Providence.
They are SO small that they penetrate the
meshes of the finest net. The bigger
one will bite through your clothes,
through your boots and buckskin gloves
There is no getting away from them.
When they kill cattle it is pretty tough,
! isn't it?


Con the cattle? Yes"


"Well. sir, we saw poor cattle rush
down into the water and wade in until
everything was covered but their heads,
and then the pests would light on their
heads inswarms and bite their noses,
and every place they could settle on, un-
til the poor things beloved in their
agony and closed their eyes and tossed
their heads. If they were human they
would commit suicide. AS it is they are
driven mad. Poor things, they are
nothing but skin and bones: mere skele.
tons clothed in swollen and liberated
skins. Some of the boys killed few of
them, but they were not fit to bring on
board. Same way with all the animals.
Antelope and deer were reduced to moth
ing but skeletons by the vampires. If
you held your hand out for quarter Of
a minute, it would be covered so thick
with mosquitoes that it would look like
you had a glove on. The sufferings of
the men were awful. tits supposed that
the natural oil on the negro's skin is Of
fensive to the pests. That is not So
They took to the niggers like babe to
its milk. Pll tell you how we were able
to go through. took down my stove.
pipes and kept smoky fires burning all
the time. / had to have two small hand
furnaces making smoke in the pilot-house
all the time, so that the pilots could
work. The men were all broke up


Every limb was swelled up, and you
could not have recognized the features
of your own brother. The smoke wa:
the only protection, and it was pretty
near as bad as the mosquitoes. The eyes
of all the menwere bloodshot. Life was


misery.


The mosquito latitude begins about
seventy-five miles below Bismarck, anG
| is good for seventy five above that point
There never was season like this one


before. For the first time in many


years they had up there what you woulc


call an open winter. There was no ict


or snow. At Fort Benton, and just lool


at your map and you will find i


about forty-seven degrees latitude, ant


that's pretty far north, they didn't pu


up ton of ice. About the lst of Marcel


the rainy season set in. There has mo-


been twelve good days since. l will
venture to say, and mind you I know
all about that country, more rain ha
fallen in that latitude this year than il


the fifteen years previous. Vegetation


is rank and tropical in its luxuriance


Weeds of an usually ordi nary growth
are higher than a mans head, and from
the water mosquitoes are bred by tn,
million. If you publish what 1 hav'
been telling you about the pests, som,
people will laugh and call it exaggera
ton. Young man, 1 couldn't begin t.
give you an idea of their numbers
. They fly in clouds. They obstruct tn
! light of the sun. They are ravenous


They are as bad in the day as night
Talk about the locusts of Egypt or tn
grasshoppers of Kansas, they are moth
: ing. They drive man almost crazy
,, Just think ofpreferring to set in blind
ing, sitting smoke rather than ventur
outside where the mosquitoes would ge
/, at them. Rather would 1 promenad
twenty hours day through the yello'
/ fever district of New Orleans than g
} through the experience with mosquitoe
that | had this summer. 1t is awful
: l can give you no idea of the nuisance
7 the torture" And the Captain aime
a vicious blow at a sleepy fly that ws
3 buzzing around, and then got up an
0 walked vigorously around to shake O
!, the memory of the Upper Missouri mo
quito misery.