With Flashlight and Rifle -* 



ants, which, especially in well-peopled, moist neighbour- 

 hoods, have taken their course along the caravan-path. 



The scourge of snakes also seems to me, in most 

 cases, to be very much exaggerated. In the daily press 

 we are accustomed, every year, to read accounts of a 

 great number of human beings who have been killed 

 by snakes and tigers in India. I have been informed 

 that the premium-system, which prevails there, has caused 

 these numbers to swell far beyond the actual facts, by 

 reason of the venality of the native subordinate officials. 



During my African journeys I have lost only two 

 servants through the bites of puff-adders. Naturally, how- 

 ever, the natives who work on the plantations are far more 

 exposed to virulent snakes than are the travelling carriers. 



Of the sometimes quite terrible scourge of ticks, I 

 have spoken in the chapter on buffaloes ; in certain 

 unhealthy regions these ticks make any kind of halt 

 impossible for Europeans. 



Amongst all the hindrances which contend against 

 a lasting stay and against the work of the European in 

 these countries, malaria must always take the first place. 

 Even the uninitiated person knows that only a few favoured 

 constitutions can spend any length of time there without 

 having to get through severe attacks of malaria. The 

 great majority of Europeans undergo violent attacks from 

 time to time. The quinine treatment, namely, the taking 

 of regularly increasing doses of quinine, has undoubtedly 

 a highly injurious effect upon the nervous system, already 

 much affected by the manifold influences of the tropical 

 climate. 



664 



