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 dwellings of the people who formerly came to us; and were very much struck by the extent of land under cultivation, though that, compared with the whole country, is very small.  Large patches of mapira continued to grow,—­as it is said it does from the roots for three years.  The mapira was mixed with tall bushes of the Congo-bean, castor-oil plants, and cotton.  The largest patch of this kind we paced, and found it to be six hundred and thirty paces on one side—­the rest were from one acre to three, and many not more than one-third of an acre.  The cotton—­of very superior quality—­was now dropping off the bushes, to be left to rot—­there was no one to gather what would have been of so much value in Lancashire.  The huts, in the different villages we entered, were