78 
V. JANUARY TO JUNE, 1914 
steadily growing. Our hospital is splendidly situated. 
Upstream and downstream, from places hundreds of 
kilometres away on the Ogowe and its tributaries, sick 
people are brought here, and the fact that those who 
bring them can be lodged here is a further encourage- 
ment to come in great numbers. And there is yet 
another attraction ; the fact that I am always at home, 
unless — and this has happened only two or three times 
so far — I have to go to some other mission station to 
treat a missionary who is ill, or some member of his - 
family. Thus the native who has undertaken the 
trouble and the expense of the journey here from 
a distance, is sure of seeing me. That is the great 
advantage which the independent doctor has over one 
appointed by the Government. The latter is ordered 
now here, now there, by the authorities, or has to spend 
a long time with a military column on the march. 
“ And that you have not got to waste so much time on 
correspondence, reports, and statistics, as we have to, 
is also an advantage, the reality of which you have not 
yet grasped,” said an army doctor not long ago, during 
a short chat with me on his way past. 
* 
* Hs 
The hut for the sleeping sickness victims is now in 
course of erection on the opposite bank, and costs me 
much money and time. When I am not myself 
superintending the labourers whom we have secured 
for grubbing up the vegetation and building the hut, 
nothing is done. For whole afternoons I have to 
neglect the sick to play the part of foreman there. 
Sleeping sickness prevails more widely here than I 
suspected at first. The chief focus of infection is in the 
