80 The National Geographic Magazine 



homeward journey very trying, part of 

 the men having to travel as far as 320 

 kilometers with hardly any water. 

 News received from this expedition 

 points to the extension southward of 

 the volcanic formations discovered by 

 M. Gautier in Mouydir. 



Thanks to M. Foureau and to the 

 officers commanding the posts of the 

 extreme south of Algeria, considerable 

 progress has been accomplished by the 

 new method of exploring the Sahara by 

 the employment of ' ' mehara ' ' (sin- 

 gular of " mehari "). This camel can 

 bear, besides his rider and his arms and 

 accoutrements, 30 days' victuals and two 

 skins of water. With this load he can 

 march from 3 to 3^ miles an hour and 

 amble at a pace of 5 miles. In the 

 raid executed in 1903 by Commandant 

 L,aperrine and Professor Gautier 69 miles 

 were traversed in 29 hours. 



One has no need for anxiety as to feed- 

 ing the mehari ; the desert flora suffices 

 for its food, and in summer it can endure 

 5 days without drinking, while when 

 plants are green it can go without water 

 for 18 or 20 days. 



By this method of penetration in the 

 Sahara, M. Foureau and these French 

 officers have there accomplished pro- 

 gress as important as that effected by 

 Nansen in his Arctic exploration. By 

 adopting the means of locomotion and of 

 existence of the Polar peoples, the Nor- 

 wegian explorer gained a memorable 

 victory. In the same way, by borrow- 

 ing from the inhabitants of the Sahara 

 their mode of life and locomotion, the 

 French have triumphed over the obsta- 

 cles which the nature of the soil and of 

 the inhabitants had set against the ex- 

 ploration of the great desert of northern 

 Africa. 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE RUSSO-JAPANESE 

 WAR, IN JAPAN AND MANCHURIA* 



By Dr Louis Livingstone Seaman 



THE Japanese soldier has been 

 taught how to treat his intes- 

 tines, and consequently his in- 

 testines are now treating him with equal 

 consideration. His plain, rational diet 

 is digested, metabolized and assimilated. 

 It is not an irritating, indigestible, fer- 

 menting mess, acting as a local irritant 

 and producing gastritis, duodenitis, en- 

 teritis, colitis, hepatitis, and the long list 

 of inflammatory intestinal processes with 

 which we were all so familiar in the hos- 

 pital wards at Camp Alger, Chattanooga, 

 Tampa, Cuba, Porto Rico, Montauk 

 Point, &c, in 1898. 



The great hospitals are there, interne, 



contagious, and infectious departments, 

 their conspicuously empty beds voicing 

 more eloquently than words the most 

 important lesson of the war. A few 

 cases of diseases of the respiratory sys- 

 tem are found — colds, bronchitis, and 

 an occasional pneumonia — contracted 

 through exposure in fording rivers, ex- 

 haustive marches, and bivouacking on 

 wet ground, a few more of typhoid (I 

 saw only three in Manchuria), occasion- 

 ally one of dysentery, and a number of 

 cases of beri beri, that former scourge of 

 oriental armies. 



But of all the many thousands gath- 

 ered in these institutions there were but 



* Abstract of an address to the National Geographic Society, December 9, 1904. Those 

 desiring further information 011 this subject are referred to Dr Seaman's instructive book 

 recently published by D. Appleton & Co. 



