168 THE CAMEL 



among them was terrific, and, as stated, about three per 

 cent, only recovered. Some of them, apparently well 

 to all outward appearances, were suddenly seized with 

 the most violent symptoms, and died within two hours. 

 Others fought against it with tremendous pluck, and 

 without even a groan or a murmur, for twenty-four to 

 thirty-six hours. Others, again, gave in to it in less than 

 half the time, their groans and agonies being almost 

 human, and realistically heartrending. While only two 

 or three struggled heroically, but in a dazed, stunned 

 kind of way, and held out for four or five days before 

 submitting to the inevitable. Horses that had never 

 been out of the stable except for exercise in the 

 afternoon, and that had been fed on bran, mealies, and 

 forage, were attacked in the same way, and succumbed 

 quite as rapidly. In all cases of post-mortem, and we 

 had a good many, all of which I attended, the lungs 

 were entirely diseased and perforated, and in many 

 instances they were rotten. 



In the low-lying veldt, and in all depressions and 

 valleys, those especially watered by a river, heavy 

 morning mists, which hung low, were a noticeable 

 feature, more so in the cold and dry seasons, and it 

 seemed to me that horses who were exposed to them 

 inhaled a malaria which got into the system and 

 attacked the lungs, doing its work insidiously and 

 without detection from lack of outward and visible 

 signs the first external signs being languor and 

 heaviness, followed quickly, sometimes instantaneously, 

 by feverish symptoms which rapidly increased, along 

 with a yellowish frothy discharge from the nostrils, and 

 in some cases a swelling of the head and before a 



