310 LIVINGSTONE'S LAST JOURNALS. [Chap. XII. 



exhaustion supervenes, which, if it be not quickly arrested 

 by active measures, passes into complete insensibility : this 

 is almost invariably the closing scene. 



In Dr. Livingstone's case we find some departure from the 

 ordinary symptoms.* He, as we have seen by the entry of 

 the 18th April was alive to the conviction that malarial 

 poison is the basis of every disorder in Tropical Africa, and 

 he did not doubt but that he was fully under its influence 

 whilst suffering so severely. As we have said, a man of less 

 endurance in all probability would have perished in the 

 first week of the terrible approach to the Lake, through 

 the flooded country and under the continual downpour that 

 he describes. It tried every constitution, saturated every 

 man with fever poison, and destroyed several, as we shall 

 see a little further on. The greater vitality in his iron 

 system very likely staved off for a few days the last state 

 of coma to which we refer, but there is quite sufficient to 

 show us that only a thin margin lay between the heavy 

 drowsiness of the last few days before reaching Chitambo's 

 and the final and usual symptom that brings on uncon- 

 sciousness and inability to speak. 



On more closely questioning the men one only elicits that 

 they imagine he hoped to recover as he had so often done 

 before, and if this really was the case it will in a measure 

 account for the absence of anything like a dying statement, 

 but still they speak again and again of his drowsiness, which 

 in itself would take away all ability to realize vividly the 

 seriousness of the situation. It may be that at the last a 

 flash of conviction for a moment lit up the mind — if so, 

 what greater consolation can those have who mourn his loss, 

 than the account that the men give of what they saw when 

 they entered the hut ? 



Livingstone had not merely turned himself, he had risen 



The great loss of blood may have had a bearing on the case. 



