malingerers to the cold comfort of the prison camp.

How is it, you might ask me, that there are any natives left, if
tropical Africa is so full of such beastly diseases as this? Is it that
the native is naturally immune, or is it that the white man is of such a
precious quality that he alone is attacked by these parasites and
poisonous biting flies? The fact is that the native is affected also,
and in childhood chiefly, so that the infant mortality in many native
tribes is very high. And there is little doubt that repeated attacks of
malaria in youth, if recovered from, do confer a kind of protection
against attacks in adult life. But this is not the case with newly
introduced disease; for the sleeping sickness that came to Uganda along
the caravan routes from the Congo, has swept away fully a million of the
natives along the shores of Lake Victoria Nyanza.

But the native has a sure sense of the unhealthiness of any locality,
and one must be prepared for trouble when one notices that the native
villages are built up on the hillsides. This was specially remarked by
us on our long trek down the Pangani, and thus we were warned of the
fever that lurked in the bright green lush meadows beside the water, and
the "fly" that soon overtook our transport mules and cattle and the
horses of General Brits' 2nd Mounted Brigade. At first we thought the
columns of smoke along the mountain-sides beside the Pangani were signal
fires for the enemy; but before long, when the roads were choked with
victims of "fly" and horse-sickness, we realised the wisdom that induced
the simple native to take his sheep and cattle up the hillsides and
above the danger zone. When one spends only a short time in some native
huts, it is quite clear how he escapes infection. For the floor is
covered with a layer of wood ashes that is usually deadly to bugs and
fleas and ticks and other crawling beasts; and the atmosphere is so full