58 
Attacked by Yellow Feveb. 
the whole black population instead of devoting their attention to work, 
might rather spend their time in the noble aid of hunting, and the pre- 
caution has naturally borne but little fruit considering that the price 
of a gun and the amount of the tax are earned quickly enough. 
206. It still seemed as if I were to be everywhere the first to pay the 
penalty which foreign custom, the sea, and the climate exacts from 
everybody — some lucky dogs excepted. In London 1 committed so many 
a breach of English etiquette that 1 got laughed at: on the voyage out I 
was the first to succumb to sea-sickness, and here again 1 was the first 
amongst all the passengers on the “Cleopatra’’ to fall a victim to yellow 
fever. Whether it was my neglect to pay more attention above every- 
thing else, to (he warning about avoiding exposure to the direct rays of 
the sun, than I could possibly do in view of my disposition and the thous- 
ands of natural history t reasures which surrounded me, or whether it was 
a matter of constitution- — at any rate, the mental excitement into 
which the new unhabituated life had transplanted me, was now only too 
soon to be appreciably deadened by the unutterable pains and torments 
of that awful disease which I suffered to a degree beyond anything 
which even the doctors themselves could call to mind for a long time 
past. 
207. My brother and 1 had spent the evening prior to the attack 
amongst some of our acquaintances: on returning home I tumbled into 
my hammock and felt fine. Towards morning a dull oppressive head- 
ache awakened me from sleep and as I hoped to relieve it on my usual 
morning outing, made as early a start as possible. But how 1 had 
deceived myself! I could have been away hardly an hour when my 
strength gradually failed, the headache increased, and insufferable pains 
hi the back now became associated with it. I dragged myself home as 
best I could, cast aside the specimens collected on this fateful excursion, 
and threw myself into the hammock, where my brdther found me already 
half senseless with most frightful fever. His first look only too evi 
dently convinced him that T had fallen a victim to the terrible Destroy- 
ing Angel of the Tropics, though 1 myself learnt the real nature of the 
disease only on my convalescence. 
20S. After giving the people around me the strictest orders not to 
satisfy my ignorance on any account whatever, he immediately hurried 
off to call in a well-known doctor, who assured me that I was only suf- 
fering from the usual climatic fever and would soon get over it. Twenty 
grains of quinine and as much calomel, which I had to take every two 
hours either as powder or pill were the medicines the first doses of which 
I took while yet in a state of consciousness. This stage nevertheless dis- 
appeared rapidly enough, for which reason I can really only sav but little 
coiDcerning my illness from personal experience: the description of its 
course is only according to what was subsequently told me. After the 
calomel had taken effect, they had stopped it, but continued dosing me 
with quinine. All mental exertion ceased: the following tliree days are 
a blank in my life — I cannot include them in it. By next morning they 
had already shaved my head and spread the whole back of it and nape 
with a, spanish-fly plaster. All measures proved of no avail : the fever 
&till increased and finally, to sustain my entirely exhausted strength, 
