14 



THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFEICA. 



southern declination of the sun, acts like the genial 

 warmth of an English spring. As all sudden changes 

 from siccity to humidity are prejudicial to man, there 

 is invariably severe disease at the end of the summer, 

 when the rains set in. 



Travellers from Unyamwezi homeward returned often 

 represent that country to be the healthiest in East- 

 ern and Central Africa : they quote, as a proof, the 

 keenness of their appetites and the quantity of food 

 which they consume. The older residents, however, 

 modify their opinions : they declare that digestion does 

 not wait upon appetite ; and that, as in Egypt, Mazan- 

 deran, Malabar, and other hot-damp countries, no man 

 long retains rude health. The sequelaB of their ma- 

 ladies are always severe; few care to use remedies, 

 deeming them inefficacious against morbific influ- 

 ences to them unknown ; convalescence is protracted, 

 painful, and uncertain, and at length they are compelled 

 to lead the lives of confirmed invalids. The gifts of 

 the climate, lassitude and indolence, according to them, 

 predispose to corpulence ; and the regular warmth 

 induces baldness, and thins the beard, thus assimilating 

 strangers in body as in mind to the aborigines. They 

 are unanimous in quoting a curious effect of climate, 

 which they attribute to a corruption of the " humours 

 and juices of the body." Men who, after a lengthened 

 sojourn in these regions return to Oman, throw away 

 the surplus provisions brought from the African coast, 

 burn their clothes and bedding, and for the first two or 

 three months eschew society ; a peculiar effluvium ren- 

 dering them, it is said, offensive to the finer olfactories 

 of their compatriots. 



The Mukunguru of Unyamwezi is perhaps the se- 

 verest seasoning fever in this part of Africa. It is a 



