292 XEJl^ GUINEA. [chap. 



Both meutal and physical exertion is under these circumstances 

 distasteful enough, but it is by active exercise alone that one is 

 able to keep in health, and we took care to give ourselves plenty 

 of it. The mornings were generally devoted to coUectmg in the 

 jungle, the afternoons to labellmg specimens, surveying, and small 

 jobs, the evenings to skinning and journal- writing. In preserving 

 our specimens we had need of all tlie patience that prickly heat 

 and other small worries had left us. All the bird-skins liad to be 

 dried in the sun or by artificial heat and soldered up in tin boxes. 

 The yacht swarmed with cockroaches and minute ants, from which 

 we had the greatest difficulty in keeping them. At meals there 

 were seldom less than a dozen or so of the former on the table at 

 any given moment, but they gave us less trouble than the ants. 

 These were not often visible, but a dead bird or butterfly left for 

 five minutes in any part of the ship would be covered by them in 

 hundreds, and nothing was safe from their ravages. For many 

 weeks, by night as well as by day, a constant stream of these little 

 creatures ascended and descended the foremast, climbing to the very 

 summit of the foretopmast. Many of our crew suffered from malarial 

 fever, which, although not actually serious, was in two cases toleral)ly 

 severe. It was chiefly of a remittent type with a concuiTcnt affec- 

 tion of the liver, and left the patient weak and unfit for work for a 

 considerable time. We ourselves, although more exposed from 

 constant work in the jungle, were less affected by it, mainly owing 

 to the gTeater precautions we took. It is almost impossible to get 

 an English sailor — especially if it be his first experience of the 

 tropics — to take even ordinary care of himself. One or more of 

 our hunters was always on the sick list, either from deep ulcers in 

 the feet and legs, caused by wounds and scratches got while shooting 

 in the forest, or else from fever, but with them the latter was of a 

 mild type. The ulcers were a very different affaii', owing to the 

 obstinacy with which they refused to heal, and one of our men was 

 incapacitated by them for the greater part of the time that he was 

 with us. 



