How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. LivingstoneStanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
History
How I found Livingstone : $b Travels, adventures, and discoveres in Central Africa, including an account of four months' residence with Dr. Livingstone
Stanley, Henry M. (Henry Morton)
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Livingstone, David, 1813-1873
This larger fly was the one chosen for the first inspection, which was
of the intensest. I permitted one to alight on my flannel pyjamas, which
I wore while en deshabille in camp. No sooner had he alighted than his
posterior was raised, his head lowered, and his weapons, consisting
of four hair-like styles, unsheathed from the proboscis-like bag which
concealed them, and immediately I felt pain like that caused by a
dexterous lancet-cut or the probe of a fine needle. I permitted him to
gorge himself, though my patience and naturalistic interest were sorely
tried. I saw his abdominal parts distend with the plenitude of the
repast until it had swollen to three times its former shrunken girth,
when he flew away of his own accord laden with blood. On rolling up my
flannel pyjamas to see the fountain whence the fly had drawn the fluid,
I discovered it to be a little above the left knee, by a crimson bead
resting over the incision. After wiping the blood the wound was similar
to that caused by a deep thrust of a fine needle, but all pain had
vanished with the departure of the fly.
Having caught a specimen of this fly, I next proceeded to institute a
comparison between it and the tsetse, as described by Dr. Livingstone on
pp. 56-57, 'Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa' (Murray's
edition of 1868). The points of disagreement are many, and such as to
make it entirely improbable that this fly is the true tsetse, though my
men unanimously stated that its bite was fatal to horses as well as to
donkeys. A descriptive abstract of the tsetse would read thus: "Not much
larger than a common house-fly, nearly of the same brown colour as the
honey-bee. After-part of the body has yellow bars across it. It has a
peculiar buzz, and its bite is death to the horse, ox, and dog. On man
the bite has no effect, neither has it on wild animals. When allowed
to feed on the hand, it inserts the middle prong of three portions into
which the proboscis divides, it then draws the prong out a little
way, and it assumes a crimson colour as the mandibles come into brisk
operation; a slight itching irritation follows the bite."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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