The Life of Captain Sir Richard F. Burton (Vol. 1&2). Lady Isabel Burton
are slightly but distinctly marked (in my own case they recurred regularly between two and three a.m. and p.m.), and the intervals are closely watched for administering quinine, after due preparation. This drug, however, has killed many, especially Frenchmen, who, by overdosing at a wrong time, died of apoplexy.
"Whilst the Persians were at Zanzibar they besieged Colonel Hamerton's door, begging him to administer Warburg's drops, which are said to have a wonderful effect in malignant chronic cases. When the disease intends to end fatally, the symptoms are aggravated; the mind wanders, the body loses all power, and after perhaps an apparent improvement, stupor, insensibility, and death ensue. On the other hand, if yielding to treatment, the fever, about the seventh day, presents marked signs of abatement; the tongue is clearer, pain leaves the head and eyes, the face is no longer flushed, nausea ceases, and a faint appetite returns. The recovery, however, is always slow and dubious. Relapses are feared, especially at the full and change of the moon; they frequently assume the milder intermittent type, and in some Indians have recurred regularly through the year. In no case, however, does the apparent severity of the fever justify the dejection and debility of the convalescence. For six weeks recovery is imperfect; the liver acts with unusual energy, the stomach is liable to severe indigestion, the body is lean, and the strength wellnigh prostrated. At such times change of air is the best of restoratives; removal, even to a ship in the harbour, or to the neighbouring house, has been found more beneficial than all the tonics and the preventatives in the Pharmacopœia.
"In men of strong nervous diathesis the fever leaves slight consequences, in the shape of white hair, boils, or bad toothaches. Others suffer severely from its secondaries, which are either visceral or cerebral. Some lose memory, others virility, others the use of a limb; many become deaf or dim-sighted; and not a few, tormented by hepatitis, dysentery, constipation, and similar disease, never completely recover health.
"Captain Owen's survey of the Mombas Mission, and of our numerous cruisers, proves that no European can undergo exposure and fatigue, which promote the overflow of bile, without undergoing the 'seasoning.' It has, however, one advantage—those who pass the ordeal are acclimatized; even with a year's absence in Europe, they return to the tropics with little danger. The traveller is always advised to undergo his seasoning upon the coast before marching into the interior; but after recovery he must await a second attack, otherwise he will expend in preparation the strength and bottom required for the execution of his journey. Of our party the Portuguese boy came in for his turn at Zanzibar. The other has ever since had light relapses; and as a proof that the negro enjoys no immunity, Seedy5 Bombay is at this moment (June 8th) suffering severely.
"The Banyans intended great civility; they would sit with us for hours, asking, like Orientals, the silliest of questions, and thinking withal that they were 'doing the agreeable:' repose was out of the question. During the day, flies and gnats added another sting to the mortifications of fever. At night, rats nibbled at our feet, mosquitoes sang their song of triumph, and a torturing thirst made the terrible sleeplessness yet more terrible. Our minds were morbidly fixed upon one point, the arrival of our vessel; we had no other occupation but to rise and gaze, and exchange regrets as a sail hove in sight, drew near, and passed by. We knew that there would be no failure on the part of our thoughtful friend, who had written to promise us a battela on the 1st of March, which did not make Pangany till the evening of the 5th of March.
"After sundry bitter disappointments, we had actually hired a Banyan's boat that had newly arrived, when the expected craft ran into the river. Not a moment was to be lost. Said bin Salim, who had been a kind nurse, superintended the embarkation of our property. Jack, less severely treated, was able to walk to the shore; but I—alas for manliness!—was obliged to be supported like a bedridden old woman. The worst part of the process was the presence of a crowd. The Arabs were civil, and bade a kindly farewell. The Sawahili, however, audibly contrasted the present with the past, and drew dedecorous conclusions from the change which a few days had worked in the man who bore a twenty-four pound gun, my pet four-ounce.6
"All thoughts of cruising along the southern coast were at an end. Colonel Hamerton had warned us not to despise bilious-remittents; and evidently we should not have been justified in neglecting his caution to return, whenever seized by sickness. With the dawn of Friday, the 6th of March, we ordered the men to up sail; we stood over for Zanzibar with a fine fresh breeze, and early in the afternoon we found ourselves once more within the pale of Eastern civilization. Deo gratias! our excellent friend at once sent us to bed, whence, gentle reader, we have the honour to make the reverential salaam."
1. The distance between Bombay and Zanzibar is two thousand five hundred miles.
2. Jack was Speke's christian name.
3. One of the places forbidden to strangers.
4. Hippopotamus.
5. He was originally Sudy, but afterwards they dubbed him Seedy.—I. B.
6. These two guns I still treasure.—I. B.
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