56 IN AFRICA 



that brought us down from Naples to Mombasa, 

 and it was most interesting to see our fellow passen- 

 gers and friends reproduced before us in their vari- 

 ous athletic activities while on shipboard. Mr. Boyce 

 gave an afternoon show for children, an evening 

 show for grown-ups, and was to give another for 

 the natives the following night. The charities of 

 Nairobi were much richer because of Mr. Boyce 

 and his African Balloonograph Expedition. 



While in Nairobi we visited the little station 

 where experiments are being made in the "sleeping 

 sickness." An intelligent young English doctor is 

 conducting the investigations and great hopes are 

 entertained of much new information about that 

 most mysterious ailment that has swept whole colo- 

 nies of blacks away in the last few years. 



In many little bottles were specimens of the 

 deadly tsetse fly that causes all the infection. And 

 the most deadly of all was the small one whose dis- 

 tinguishing characteristic was its wings, which 

 crossed over its back. These we were told to look 

 out for and to avoid them, if possible. They occur 

 only in certain districts and live in the deep shade, 

 near water. They also are day-biting insects, who 

 do their biting only between eleven o'clock in the 

 morning and five o'clock in the afternoon. 



In the station there were a number of monkeys, 

 upon which the fly was being tried. They were in 

 various stages of the disease, but it seemed im- 

 possible to tell whether their illness was due to the 

 sleeping sickness germ or was due to tick fever, 



