40 COLLAPSE AND RETURN part i 



clumsy boat to Ngatana, they had sent the letter on by the 

 owner of the captured vessel, who was going up the river 

 elephant-shooting, for which he had a permit from the British 

 East Africa Company. I apologised, and gave him some 

 coffee. We laughed over the matter ; he gave me a fine pair 

 of horns of the waterbuck, and then went on his way. It was 

 lucky we caught him by surprise, for his party was well armed, 

 and would probably have resisted capture. If his men had 

 had time to get their weapons loaded, accidents might easily 

 have happened. 



On the 14th seventy more porters came up under Omari, 

 our head Zanzibari ; most of them returned the same day 

 for another batch of stores. So many of the camp garrison 

 were down with fever and dysentery that I had to retain 

 a number of the newcomers in order to keep the camp work 

 going. Most of my small stock of medicines had long since 

 been exhausted, and the condition of the men was very serious. 

 One great difficulty in treating the sick was that, owing to their 

 fanatical prejudices, they could not be persuaded to take proper 

 nourishment. Half of the available food was barred by the 

 condition of their stomachs, the other half by the articles of 

 their creed. 



The Somali, as Islamites of the Islamites, would not take 

 any meat that had not been killed by one of themselves. As 

 the Abyssinians were Christians I thought I should be spared 

 this trouble with them. One evening, therefore, I sent them 

 my soup, though I could ill afford to spare it. As the sick 

 men were no better when I went round to see them a couple of 

 hours afterwards I made inquiries, and found that they had 

 thrown the soup into the Tana ; they explained that though it 

 had been prepared by Christians, it had been made by such 

 very different Christians from themselves that they could not 

 drink it. 



The result was the men sickened, weakened, and died. We 

 had started for Ngatana with a stock of medicine calculated to 

 last twelve men for four days. It had to last for a month, and 

 during part of this time to supply ninety men, of whom on an 

 average fifty were ill. 



On the 17th I was taken ill myself; I tried to go my 

 rounds as usual, but had to be carried back to the tent. Next 



