56 
IN AFRICA 
that brought us down from Naples to Mombasa, 
and it was most interesting to see our fellow passen¬ 
gers and friends reproduced before us in their vari¬ 
ous athletic activities while on shipboard. Mr. Boyce 
gave an afternoon show for children, an evening 
show for grown-ups, and was to give another for 
the natives the following night. The charities of 
Nairobi were much richer because of Mr. Boyce 
and his African Balloonograph Expedition. 
While in Nairobi we visited the little station 
where experiments are being made in the “sleeping 
sickness.” An intelligent young English doctor is 
conducting the investigations and great hopes are 
entertained of much new information about that 
most mysterious ailment that has swept whole colo¬ 
nies of blacks away in the last few years. 
In many little bottles were specimens of the 
deadly tsetse fly that causes all the infection. And 
the most deadly of all was the small one whose dis¬ 
tinguishing characteristic was its wings, which 
crossed over its back. These we were told to look 
out for and to avoid them, if possible. They occur 
only in certain districts and live in the deep shade, 
near water. They also are day-biting insects, who 
do their biting only between eleven o’clock in the 
morning and five o’clock in the afternoon. 
In the station there were a number of monkeys, 
upon which the fly was being tried. They were in 
various stages of the disease, but it seemed im¬ 
possible to tell whether their illness was due to the 
sleeping sickness germ or was due to tick fever, 
