AMID THE SNOW PEAKS OF THE EQUATOR 



273 



of tick (Omithodoros moubata), a fre- 

 quenter of native houses and old camp- 

 ing places, which carries in its blood a 

 micro-organism called Spirochceta dut- 

 toni. When it is introduced into the blood 

 of a man by the bite of one of these ticks, 

 the spirochceta is the cause of a particu- 

 larly unpleasant relapsing fever. An or- 

 dinary attack lasts for two or three days, 

 and recurs again after an interval of a 

 week or more ; in severe cases the attacks 

 may be continued for months. Hitherto 

 no satisfactory remedy has been discov- 

 ered for the fever, and all that can be 

 done is to take steps to avoid being bit- 

 ten by the tick. 



There are some districts in which the 

 fever is so prevalent that it is difficult 

 to induce porters to travel through them. 

 It is useless to tell them that if they sleep 

 in the old shelters they will get fever; 

 they smile indulgently but incredulously 

 at the crazy European, and unless they 

 are turned out of the old shelters and 

 compelled to make new ones, tick-bites 

 and spirillum fever are the speedy re- 

 sults. The Uganda government has or- 

 dered the destruction of the camp shelters 

 along the roads in the worst infected dis- 

 tricts, and it is hoped that in this way 

 the disease will be kept with bounds. 



In spite of all our precautions, my 

 friend and I fell victims to it. 



primitive: methods op carrying Eire 



The people of the Kivu region still 

 retain the primitive method of obtaining 

 fire from wood. The apparatus is simple 

 enough and consists of a slender stick of 

 hard wood, a flat piece of soft and partly 

 charred wood (often a segment of a bam- 

 boo), and a scrap of inflammable ma- 

 terial, such as rag or bark. The slender 

 stick is placed upright upon the soft wood 

 and is rotated very rapidly between the 

 palms of the hands ; the tinder, placed 

 close to the point of contact, smoulders 

 in a few seconds and can easily be blown 

 into a flame. Many of them were glad 

 enough to sell their fire-machines for a 

 small box of Swedish matches. 



In districts where this method of ob- 

 taining fire is not employed the natives 

 have a convenient habit of carrying fire 



secreted somewhere about their persons. 

 If he is a person who wears a rag of 

 some sort, he probably has a fragment of 

 smouldering wool or fiber tied up in a 

 corner of his garment. If he is very 

 scantily attired, his fire will be carefully 

 folded up in a piece of banana leaf and 

 attached to his spear or stick, as the case 

 may be. 



In the old days of African travel no 

 doubt any kind of cloth and beads of any 

 size or color were welcomed everywhere ; 

 but the old order has changed. It is 

 true that our beads went like hot cakes 

 round the shores of Lake Albert Edward, 

 but when we came to the volcanoes and 

 southward, the natives turned up their 

 noses (or made an equivalent grimace) at 

 our beautiful blue-glass beads and would 

 have nothing of them. They said they 

 must have red beads — small red beads — 

 or none at all. In other places they 

 wanted small blue beads or large red 

 beads, and so on. It was the same with 

 the cloth ; one district had a preference 

 for blue cloth, another for white, and an- 

 other for spotted cloth. There are as 

 many different fashions in beads and 

 cloth in Central Africa as there are in 

 ladies' hats and gowns in more civilized 

 countries. 



THOUSANDS DESTROYED BY SLEEPING-SICK- 

 NESS IN CONGO STATE 



The country around the west coast of 

 Lake Tanganyika, in the Congo Free 

 State, has been almost entirely depopu- 

 lated by sleeping-sickness, which was un- 

 known on the shores of the lake until 

 the year 1903. Whole villages have been 

 wiped out and huge tracts of fertile land 

 along the lake which were formerly culti- 

 vated have become impenetrable jungle. 

 One day we passed the deserted relics 

 of a mission station which had been 

 the center of a large settlement; the peo- 

 ple had all died or had migrated to a 

 less cursed country, and there were no 

 oupils left to be taught by the Fathers, 

 who had, therefore, gone elsewhere. Al- 

 most daily, as we walked westward from 

 Tanganyika, we passed corpses by the 

 roadside, dead of the terrible sickness ; 

 and it was no uncommon thing for the 



