EXPERIENCES AMONG LEECHES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1899, Page 3 (Supplement)

EXPERIENCES AMONG LEECHES.

There are some experiences related in his new book by Major Waddell, which, no tourist in the Himalayas would like to repeat. We would all fight shy of the leeches in that damp forest of the Tees.ta Valley. When a leech is famishing, he is only as 'thick as a knitting needle.' In that condition he is the hungry enemy of every two or four footed creature that crosses his path. And the leeches were every v/here. They 'stood alert on every twig of the brushwood that overhung our track and on every dead leaf on the path. And as we approached they lashed themselves vigorously to and fro, in the wild endeavour to seize hold of us. The instant they touch their victim they fix themselves firmly and then mount nimbly up by a series of rapid somersault 3 till they reach a vulnerable point; and then they lose not an instant in commencing their surgical operations. Our poor servants and coolies who walked barefooted were of course badly bitten. From their ankles and legs little streams of blood trickled all day, and at every few steps th*ey had to stop and pick off these horrid little pests, and it was often difficult to dislodge them.' Major Waddell and some of his friends took the precaution of dusting their stockings with tobacco snuff and binding their legs from ankle to knee with 'putties.' But the leeches got in all the same, ,'through the eyelets of our boots.' Numbers of them, having drunk all they could hold, 'crept down into our boots, and there got squashed. . . and all this had happened quite unconsciously to us. It was pitiful also to see the poor cattle, ponies, and goats in these leechinfested forests. Their legs were always bleeding more or less, and these pests lodge in their nostrils and hang from their eyelids and various parts of the body. To dislodge them from the recesses of the nose, the herdsmen, it is said, keep the poor beasts from water for a day or so, and then, when the animal drinks, the leeches show themselves and .may be removed. All the Lepchas have their legs covered with the sears of these leech bites; and the actual loss of blood in this way must be very great. I have no doubt that these pests have something to do with the remarkable absence of four-footed game in these regions.'