318 THE LAKE REGIONS OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 



Arabs bag, masad and kideh : it is the hig or haskul of 

 Somaliland, where it affects the poorest ground, cannot 

 be burnt down, and is impassable to naked legs and 

 cattle. The leaves are stripped of their coats, and the 

 ends being tightly bound between two pieces of wood, 

 the mass of fibre is drawn out like a sword from its 

 sheath. Fatilah, or matchlock matches, are made in 

 Zanzibar of cotton, and in the interior of calabash 

 fibre. 



As might be expected among a sparse population lead- 

 ing a comparatively simple life, the vast variety of dis- 

 eases which afflict more civilised races, who are collected 

 in narrow spaces, are unknown in East Africa even by 

 name. Its principal sporadic is fever, remittent and in- 

 termittent, with its multitudinous secondaries, concern- 

 ing which notices have been scattered through the pre- 

 ceding pages. The most dangerous epidemic is its 

 aborigen, the small-pox, which, propagated without con- 

 tact or fomites, sweeps at times like a storm of death 

 over the land. For years it has not left the Arab colony 

 at Kazeh, and, shortly before the arrival of the Expedi- 

 tion, in a single month 52 slaves died out of a total of 

 800. The ravages of this disease amongst the half- 

 starved and over- worked gangs of caravan porters have 

 already been described ; as many as a score of these 

 wretches have been seen at a time in a single caravan ; 

 men staggering along blinded and almost insensible, 

 jostling and stumbling against every one in their way ; 

 and mothers carrying babes, both parent and progeny 

 in the virulent stage of the fell disease. The Arabs 

 have partially introduced the practice of inoculating, 

 anciently known in South Africa; the pus is introduced 

 into an incision in the forehead between the eyebrows. 

 The people have no remedy for small- pox : they trust 



