LAST MONTHS IN AFRICA 169 
though he still breathed. While I was busied with him 
I could see through the door of the hut the bright blue 
waters of the bay in their frame of green woods, a 
scene of almost magic beauty, looking still more enchant- 
ing in the flood of golden light poured over it by the 
setting sun. To be shown in a single glance such a 
paradise and such helpless, hopeless misery, was over- 
whelming . . . but it was a symbol of the condition of 
Africa. 
On my return to Lambarene I found plenty to do, 
but this did not frighten me. I was fresh and 
vigorous again. Much of the work was caused just 
then by men who were ill with dysentery. Carriers 
for the military colony of the Cameroons had been 
impressed in our district, and many of them had caught 
the infection, but subcutaneous injections of emetin 
proved very effective even in the oldest cases. 
When this levy of carriers was made, one of my 
patients who had a bad ulcer on his foot wanted to 
join as a volunteer, so that his brother, who had been 
taken, might not have to go alone. I represented to 
him that in three or four days he would fall out and 
be left on the roadside, where he would assuredly die. 
However, he would not let himself be convinced, and 
I almost had to use violence to keep him back. 
I happened to be present when a body of impressed 
carriers who were to be taken to the Cameroons by 
water were embarked on the river steamer at N’Gomo, 
Then the natives began to know by experience what 
war really is. The vessel had started amid the wailing 
of the women ; its trail of smoke had disappeared in 
the distance, and the crowd had dispersed, but on a 
stone on the river bank an old woman whose son had 
