As to the insect plagues of Egypt, I found the mosquitoes alone annoying. Had I been in the country in the summer or autumn, my experience would, I have no doubt, have been different. And as to the mosquitoes, I found them seriously annoying only at Alexandria. At one time I had my face, hands, and ankles very badly bitten. My own carelessness, however, was the cause of this, for I was at that time in the habit of reading and writing at night with open windows. This was giving my bloodthirsty assailants, who had been attracted by the candle, every facility. They had free ingress, and found their victim off his guard and exposed to their attacks. At Zech’s hotel at Cairo, I found no mosquitoes. In going up the river I had a chasse every night, before I turned in, to clear off the few that might be in my berth. I generally found one or two. Herodotus mentions the use by the Egyptians of the mosquito net.
In a Belgravian hotel I have been badly bitten, and by a larger, blacker, and more venomous kind of mosquito than those that forced themselves on my notice in Egypt. On the same occasion I saw ladies who were suffering so much from their attacks that they were obliged to have recourse to medical treatment. This ferocious species is supposed to have been imported to Thames-side in some one or other of the earlier stages of insect existence, through the medium of the water-tanks of our West African palm-oil traders.
It is curious that fleas, which so abound in Egypt, are not found in Nubia. Many insects are very local: but one is surprised at finding such a cosmopolite as the flea conspicuously absent in a country, which might have been supposed especially adapted to his manners and customs. In Egypt, as has been the case elsewhere, I often felt industrious fleas at work upon me; but I am not aware that a flea ever yet succeeded in biting me. Others I heard complaining much of them.
The boat in which I went up the river had just been painted, and so I saw nothing in it of the Egyptian bug; but I heard that they abounded in other boats. I found the Hotel d’Europe, at Alexandria, and Zech’s, at Cairo, quite free from them.
The domestic fly is about as troublesome in Egypt in winter as it is in this country in autumn.