Mosquitoes

Mosquitoes are a persistent environmental hazard in the forest passages of New France, turning travel and survival into a bodily struggle. They accompany René Sel and Charles Duquet from their first trek through the woods and return during Duquet’s later ordeal alone, making the forest’s dangers cumulative rather than confined to one dramatic encounter.

First Passage Through the Forest

As the exhausted engagés cross deep woods, mosquitoes appear alongside no-see-ums and blackflies. Their numbers and keening become part of the sound of the landscape, while bites add to the discomfort of stumbling over roots and struggling onward after the ocean voyage. The insects are not an isolated threat: they form one element of an environment that steadily wears down the travelers.

At a bog, Monsieur Trépagny advises the men to smear mud over exposed skin, especially behind the ears and across the crown. He explains that insects get through the hair and that a tuque protects him; he also describes a salve made from spruce-needle oil and animal fat, though he has none to give them. The improvised mud is their available defense, and the episode shows the travelers learning to endure conditions for which their previous experience has not prepared them.

Fatigue and Night Exposure

The mosquitoes continue to trouble René after the party makes camp. As he lies awake with cramped legs, the pines hissing in the wind, and owls calling, mosquitoes join the cold and fatigue that prevent rest. Their recurrence links the forest journey’s daytime exertion to the vulnerability of the night: even when the travelers stop moving, the environment continues to press upon them.

Duquet Alone in the Wilderness

During his later flight, Charles Duquet faces mosquitoes without the protection or company available on the earlier journey. By the third week, he is exhausted, injured, and weakened by blood loss; swarms of mosquitoes surround him as he crawls through the forest. The insects compound the effects of hunger, wounds, and disorientation, making survival a prolonged accumulation of hazards rather than a single confrontation.

Narrative Significance

The mosquitoes give the forest an active presence in the narrative. They are not merely scenery: their bites, swarms, and persistence shape how people travel, rest, and endure. Across René’s first passage and Duquet’s later ordeal, the insects mark a continuity between shared hardship and solitary danger, while emphasizing that the wilderness can injure through repeated, ordinary exposure as well as through spectacular threats.