CHAP. XIII. EFFECTS OF RAREFIED AIR. 371 



scape. In the north, masses of hills prevented our seeing 

 more than eight or ten miles. 



The air which was so exhilarating to Europeans had 

 an opposite effect on five men who had been born and 

 reared in the malaria of the Delta of the Zambesi. No 

 sooner did they reach the edge of the plateau at Ndonda, 

 than they lay down prostrate, and complained of pains all 

 over them. The temperature was not much lower than 

 that on the shores of the Lake below, 76° being the mean 

 temperature of the day, 52° the lowest, and 82° the 

 highest during the twenty-four hours ; at the Lake it was 

 about 10° higher. Of the symptoms they complained of — 

 pains everywhere — nothing could be made. And yet it 

 was evident that they had good reason for saying that 

 they were ill. They scarified almost every part of their 

 bodies as a remedial measure ; medicines, administered on 

 the supposition that their malady was the effect of a 

 sudden chill, had no effect, and in two days one of them 

 actually died in consequence of, as far as we could judge, 

 a change from a malarious to a purer and more rarefied 

 atmosphere. 



As we were on the slave route, we found the people 

 more churlish than usual. On being expostulated with 

 about it, they replied, " We have been made wary by 

 those who come to buy slaves." The calamity of death 

 having befallen our party, seemed, however, to awaken 

 their sympathies. They pointed out their usual burying- 

 place, lent us hoes, and helped to make the grave. When we 

 offered to pay all expenses, they showed that they had not 

 done these friendly offices without fully appreciating their 

 value ; for they enumerated the use of the hut, the mat on 

 which the deceased had lain, the hoes, the labour, and the 

 medicine which they had scattered over the place to make 

 him rest in peace. 



The primitive African faith seems to be that there is 



