Although quinine was not found to be a preventive, except possibly in the
way of acting as a tonic, and rendering the system more able to resist
the influence of malaria, it was found invaluable in the cure of the
complaint, as soon as pains in the back, sore bones, headache, yawning,
quick and sometimes intermittent pulse, noticeable pulsations of the
jugulars, with suffused eyes, hot skin, and foul tongue, began. {1}

Very curious are the effects of African fever on certain minds.
Cheerfulness vanishes, and the whole mental horizon is overcast with
black clouds of gloom and sadness. The liveliest joke cannot provoke
even the semblance of a smile. The countenance is grave, the eyes
suffused, and the few utterances are made in the piping voice of a
wailing infant. An irritable temper is often the first symptom of
approaching fever. At such times a man feels very much like a fool, if
he does not act like one. Nothing is right, nothing pleases the fever-
stricken victim. He is peevish, prone to find fault and to contradict,
and think himself insulted, and is exactly what an Irish naval surgeon
before a court-martial defined a drunken man to be: "a man unfit for
society."

Finding that it was impossible to take our steamer of only ten-horse
power through Kebrabasa, and convinced that, in order to force a passage
when the river was in flood, much greater power was required, due
information was forwarded to Her Majesty's Government, and application
made for a more suitable vessel. Our attention was in the mean time
turned to the exploration of the river Shire, a northern tributary of the
Zambesi, which joins it about a hundred miles from the sea. We could
learn nothing satisfactory from the Portuguese regarding this affluent;
no one, they said, had ever been up it, nor could they tell whence it
came. Years ago a Portuguese expedition is said, however, to have