318 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
with me. I coulcl not realise that just at the moment 
when a threatening fever made me especially require my 
medicines I was about to lose them all. I could not 
face the contingency of having my stock of provisions, 
on which I depended not only for the prosecution of my 
journey, but for my very maintenance, totally de¬ 
stroyed ; neither could I resign myself to the loss of all 
the natural curiosities that I had laboured for so many 
days to accumulate. I called vehemently upon my own 
crew to hasten to the rescue ; but they, in their alarm 
at the desperate plight of the others, were quite power¬ 
less ; they were utterly bewildered, and were letting 
themselves drift into the fury of the current; but 
happily they were within reach of the drooping branches 
of a tree, at which they clutched only just in time to 
make their boat secure. By this time the boat in front 
had twisted round, and presented its broadside to the 
angry Hood. Nothing could save it now. Heedless of 
the state of fever I was in, I should have flung myself 
into the current, determined to help if I could, had not 
the boatmen held me back. Not that any assistance on 
my part could have been of any avail, for in another 
moment I saw that the paddles were all broken, the 
men lost their equilibrium, and, to my horror, the boat 
was overturned. 
At the greatest risk, by the combined exertions of 
both crews, the capsized canoe was after some time set 
afloat again, and a few trifling articles were gathered 
up, but the bulk of my baggage was irrecoverably lost. 
Thus ended all my schemes ; thus vanished all my 
visions for the future. 
No one can conceive the keenness of my disappoint¬ 
ment. The preparations of seven previous years had 
proved fruitless. Here I was, not only suffering in 
body from the increasing pains of fever, but dejected in 
spirit at the conviction that I must forthwith abandon 
my enterprise. 
An hour after that deplorable passage of the Mutsliila 
Aumsinga, which never can be effaced from my memory, 
we landed on the right-hand bank of the Zambesi, just 
