our complement--were encouraged to hunt
for guinea-fowl, which in June, when the water inland is dried up, come
in large flocks to the river's banks, and roost on the trees at night.
Everything that can be done to keep mind and body employed tends to
prevent fever.

While we were employed in these operations, some of the poor starved
people about had been in the habit of crossing the river, and reaping the
self-sown mapira, in the old gardens of their countrymen. In the
afternoon of the 9th, a canoe came floating down empty, and shortly after
a woman was seen swimming near the other side, which was about two
hundred yards distant from us. Our native crew manned the boat, and
rescued her; when brought on board, she was found to have an arrow-head,
eight or ten inches long, in her back, below the ribs, and slanting up
through the diaphragm and left lung, towards the heart--she had been shot
from behind when stooping. Air was coming out of the wound, and, there
being but an inch of the barbed arrow-head visible, it was thought better
not to run the risk of her dying under the operation necessary for its
removal; so we carried her up to her own hut. One of her relatives was
less scrupulous, for he cut out the arrow and part of the lung. Mr.
Young sent her occasionally portions of native corn, and strange to say
found that she not only became well, but stout. The constitution of
these people seems to have a wonderful power of self-repair--and it could
be no slight privation which had cut off the many thousands that we saw
dead around us.

We regretted that, in consequence of Dr. Meller having now sole medical
charge, we could not have his company in our projected trip; but he found
employment in botany and natural history, after the annual sickly season
of March, April, and May was over; and his constant presence was not so
much required at the ship. Later in the year, when he could be well
spared, he went down the river to take up an appointment he had been
offered in Madagascar; but unfortunately was so severely tried by illness
while detained at the coast, that for nearly two years he was not able to
turn his abilities as a naturalist to account by proceeding to that
island. We have no doubt but he will yet distinguish himself in that
untrodden field.

On the 16th of June we started for the Upper Cataracts, with a mule-cart,
our road lying a distance of a mile west from the river. We saw many of
the deserted