Altitude above sea (barometer) 5353 feet;
Altitude above sea (boiling-point) 5385 feet.
——­
Diff. 32.[46]

Nothing but famine and famine prices, the people living on mushrooms and leaves.  Of mushrooms we observed that they choose five or six kinds, and rejected ten sorts.  One species becomes as large as the crown of a man’s hat; it is pure white, with a blush of brown in the middle of the crown, and is very good roasted; it is named “Motenta;” another, Mofeta; 3rd, Bosefwe; 4th, Nakabausa; 5th, Chisimbe, lobulated, green outside, and pink and fleshy inside; as a relish to others:  some experience must have been requisite to enable them to distinguish the good from the noxious, of which they reject ten sorts.

We get some elephants’ meat from the people, but high is no name for its condition.  It is very bitter, but we used it as a relish to the maere porridge:  none of the animal is wasted; skin and all is cut up and sold, not one of us would touch it with the hand if we had aught else, for the gravy in which we dip our porridge is like an aqueous solution of aloes, but it prevents the heartburn, which maere causes when taken alone.  I take mushrooms boiled instead; but the meat is never refused when we can purchase it, as it seems to ease the feeling of fatigue which jungle-fruit and fare engenders.  The appetite in this country is always very keen, and makes hunger worse to bear:  the want of salt, probably, makes the gnawing sensation worse.

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[We now come to a disaster which cannot be exaggerated in importance when we witness its after effects month by month on Dr. Livingstone.  There can be little doubt that the severity of his subsequent illnesses mainly turned upon it, and it is hardly too much to believe that his constitution from this time was steadily sapped by the effects of fever-poison which he was powerless to counteract, owing to the want of quinine.  In his allusion to Bishop Mackenzie’s death, we have only a further confirmation of the one rule in all such cases which must be followed, or the traveller in Africa goes—­not with his life in his hand, but in some luckless box, put in the charge of careless servants.  Bishop Mackenzie had all his drugs destroyed by the upsetting of a canoe, in which was his case of medicines, and in a moment everything was soaked and spoilt.

It cannot be too strongly urged on explorers that they should divide their more important medicines in such a way that a total loss shall become well-nigh impossible.  Three or four tin canisters containing some calomel, Dover’s powder, colocynth, and, above all, a supply of quinine, can be distributed in different packages, and then, if a mishap occurs similar to that which Livingstone relates, the disaster is not beyond remedy.]

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