INTRODUCTION. xliii 



of those who had embarked in it. Yet, by a fatality that 

 is ahnost inexplicable, never were the results of an an ex- 

 pedition more melancholy and disastrous. Captain Tuckey, 

 Lieutenant Hawkey, Mr. Eyre, and ten of tlie Congo's crew, 

 Professor Smith, Mr. Cranch, Mr. Tudor, and Mr. Galwey, 

 in all eighteen persons, died in the short space of less than 

 three months which they remained in the river, or within 

 a few days after leaving the river. Fourteen of the above- 

 mentioned were of the parly of thirty who set out on the 

 land journey beyond the cataracts ; the other four were 

 attacked on board the Congo ; two died in the passage 

 out, and the serjeant of marines at the hospital at Bahia, 

 making the total number of deaths amount to twenty -one. 



This great mortality is the more extraordinary, as it 

 appears from Captain Tuckey 's journal that nothing could 

 be finer than the climate, the thermometer never descend- 

 ing lower than 60° of Fahrenheit during the night, and 

 seldom exceeding 76^ in the day time ; the atmosphere 

 remarkably dry ; scarcely a shower falling during the 

 Avhole of the journey ; and the sun sometimes for three or 

 four days not shewing himself sufficiently clear to enable 

 them to get an observation. 



It appears indeed from the report of Mr. M'^ Kerrow, 

 the assistant surgeon of the Congo, that though the greater 

 number were carried off by a most violent fever of the 

 remittant type, some of them appeared to have no other 

 ailment than that which had been caused by extreme 

 fatigue, and actually to have died from exhaustion. The 

 greater number however of the whole crew caught the 

 fever, and some of them died of it who had been left on 

 board the Congo below the cataracts ; " but these,'" as 



