way to take pains to
obtain embroidered sheets and lace-edged pillows, absolved us in their
eyes from all the want of surgical nursing. Liberal morphia we had to
give to compensate for nursing defects. I have long felt that I would
rather work for sick soldiers than for any class of humanity; and in
fifteen years I have come to know the sick human animal in all his
forms. So that the least that one could do was to scheme to get the
precious egg by private barter with the natives, and to find the silk
pillow that spelt comfort, but was the anathema of asepsis. No wonder
that such splendid and uncomplaining victims spurred us to our best
endeavours and made of toil a very joy.

SOME AFRICAN DISEASES

This is the season of blackwater fever, the pestilence that stalks in
the noontide and the terror of tropical campaigning. Hitherto with the
exception of the Rhodesians who have had this disease previously in
their northern territory, or men who have come from the Congo or the
shores of the Great Lakes, our army has been fairly free from this dread
visitation. The campaigning area of the coast and the railway line of
British East Africa that gave our men malaria in plenty during the first
two years of war, had not provided many of those focal areas in which
this disease is distributed. The Loyal North Lancashires and the 25th
Royal Fusiliers had been but little affected. The Usambara Valley along
the Tanga-Moschi railway was also fairly free. On the big trek from
Kilimanjaro to Morogoro the blackwater cases were almost entirely
confined to Rhodesians and to the Kashmiris, who suffer in this way in
their native mountains of Nepal. But once we struck the Central Railway
and penetrated south towards the delta of the Rufigi the tale was
different. British and South African troops began to arrive in the grip
of this fell malady. It was written on their faces as they were lifted
from ambulance or mule waggon. There was no need to seek the cause in
the scrap of paper that was the sick report. All who ran could read it
in the blanched lips, the grey-green pallor of their faces, the
jaundiced eye, the hurried breathing. Thereupon came three days'
struggle with Azrael's pale shape before the blackwater gave place to
the natural colour again, or until the secreting mechanism gave up the
contest altogether and the Destroying Angel settled firmly on his prey.
At first, if there was no vomiting, it was easy to ply the hourly drin