My
Only Resource Was To Send Saat To Market Daily To Purchase All He Could
Find, And He Usually Returned After Some Hours' Absence With A Basket
Containing Coffee, Tobacco, And Butter.
We were comfortably settled at Kisoona, and the luxury of coffee after
so long an abstinence was a perfect blessing.
Nevertheless, in spite of
good food, I was a martyr to fever, which attacked me daily at about 2
P.M. and continued until sunset. Being without quinine I tried vapour
baths, and by the recommendation of one of the Turks I pounded and
boiled a quantity of the leaves of the castor-oil plant in a large pot
containing about four gallons: this plant was in great abundance. Every
morning I arranged a bath by sitting in a blanket, thus forming a kind
of tent, with the pot of boiling water beneath my stool. Half an hour
passed in this intense heat produced a most profuse perspiration, and
from the commencement of the vapour system the attacks of fever
moderated both in violence and frequency. In about a fortnight, the
complaint had so much abated that my spirits rose in equal proportion,
and, although weak, I had no mortal fear of my old enemy.
The king, Kamrasi, had supplied me with provisions, but I was troubled
daily by messengers who requested me to appear before him to make
arrangements for the proposed attack upon Rionga and Fowooka. My excuse
for non-attendance was my weak state; but Kamrasi determined not to be
evaded, and one day his headman Quonga announced that the king would pay
me a visit on the following morning.
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