Benta was well supplied with Indian corn and a grain which the natives called choroko, which I take to be vetches.  I purchased a large supply of choroko for my own personal use, as I found it to be a most healthy food.  The corn was stored on the flat roofs of the tembes in huge boxes made out of the bark of the mtundu-tree.  The largest box I have ever seen in Africa was seen here.  It might be taken for a Titan’s hat-box; it was seven feet in diameter, and ten feet in height.

On the 29th, after travelling in a S.W. by S. direction, we reached Kikuru.  The march lasted for five hours over sun-cracked plains, growing the black jack, and ebony, and dwarf shrubs, above which numerous ant-hills of light chalky-coloured earth appeared like sand dunes.

The mukunguru, a Kisawahili term for fever, is frequent in this region of extensive forests and flat plains, owing to the imperfect drainage provided by nature for them.  In the dry season there is nothing very offensive in the view of the country.  The burnt grass gives rather a sombre aspect to the country, covered with the hard-baked tracks of animals which haunt these plains during the latter part of the rainy season.  In the forest numbers of trees lie about in the last stages of decay, and working away with might and main on the prostrate trunks may be seen numberless insects of various species.  Impalpably, however, the poison of the dead and decaying vegetation is inhaled into the system with a result sometimes as fatal as that which is said to arise from the vicinity of the Upas-tree.

The first evil results experienced from the presence of malaria are confined bowels and an oppressive languor, excessive drowsiness, and a constant disposition to yawn.  The tongue assumes a yellowish, sickly hue, coloured almost to blackness; even the teeth become yellow, and are coated with an offensive matter.  The eyes of the patient sparkle lustrously, and become suffused with water.  These are sure symptoms of the incipient fever which shortly will rage through the system.

Sometimes this fever is preceded by a violent shaking fit, during which period blankets may be heaped on the patient’s form, with but little amelioration of the deadly chill he feels.  It is then succeeded by an unusuall/y/ severe headache, with excessive pains about the loins and spinal column, which presently will spread over the shoulder-blades, and, running up the neck, find a final lodgment in the back and front of the head.  Usually, however, the fever is not preceded by a chill, but after languor and torpitude have seized him, with excessive heat and throbbing temples, the loin and spinal column ache, and raging thirst soon possesses him.  The brain becomes crowded with strange fancies, which sometimes assume most hideous shapes.  Before the darkened vision of the suffering man, float in a seething atmosphere, figures of created and uncreated reptiles, which are metamorphosed every instant into stranger shapes and