A SERIOUS MATTER. 359 



master skill. More particularly was he impressed with the 

 singular effects of this rite of the continent on the minds of 

 those who were called on to submit to it. His own eloquent 

 words, pervaded by a depth of feeling which leaves little doubt 

 of the teacher at whose feet he received his impressions, are as 

 follows : 



" Cheerfulness vanishes, and the whole mental horizon is 

 overcast with black clouds of gloom and sadness. The liveliest 

 joke cannot provoke even the semblance of a smile. The coun- 

 tenance is grave, the eyes suffused, and the few utterances are 

 made in the piping voice of a wailing infant. An irritable 

 temper is often the first symptom of approaching fever. At 

 such times a man feels very much like a fool, if he does not act 

 like one. Nothing is right, nothing pleases the fever-stricken 

 victim. He is peevish, prone to find fault and to contradict, 

 and think himself insulted, and is exactly what an Irish naval 

 surgeon before a court-martial defined a drunken man to be : 

 ' a man unfit for society.' If a party were all soaked full of 

 malaria at once, the life of the leader of the expedition would be 

 made a burden to him. One might come with lengthened 

 visage, and urge as a good reason for his despair, if further 

 progress were attempted, that f he had broken the photograph 

 of his wife;' another, 'that his proper position was unjustly 

 withheld because special search was not directed towards " the 

 ten lost tribes." ' It is dangerous to rally such a one, for the 

 irate companion may quote Scripture, and point to their habitat 

 - beyond the rivers of Ethiopia.' When a man begins to feel 

 that everything is meant to his prejudice, he either takes a dose 

 of * rousers,' or writes to the newspapers, according to the 

 amount of sense with which nature has endowed him." 



It is, however, the deliberate testimony of Dr. Livingstone, 

 that there is a reliable preventative against even African fever, 

 to be found in " plenty of interesting work and abundance of 

 wholesome food to eat," a prescription which may not be de- 

 spised in any country. 



"To a man well housed," says he, "and clothed, who enjoys 

 these advantages, the fever at Tete will not prove a more for- 

 midable enemy than a common cold ; but let one of these be 

 wanting — let him be indolent, or guilty of excesses in eating or 



