Utter bewilderment, fright, anger and despair were all portrayed there; he managed to brew some tea, and I had to be satisfied with that and a pipe—fortunately my tobacco had been stowed away elsewhere, otherwise I verily believe that they would have eaten that as well, and probably felt none the worse for it! As the waters receded, native dwellings sprang up around as if by magic, and Burmese came from—goodness knows where! They divined our wants, and, like every other nation on the face of the globe, were not averse to supplying them at a good profit. Hitherto, my expenditure had figured at the modest amount of Rs. 25 a month, 15 for rations and 10 for my servant, while the balance was accumulating. Two pound ten shillings was not excessive for a month’s living and attendance, while quarters were free. A new arrival brought to the station some beer and other delicacies, and the morning after I had dined with him, I awoke a wiser and a better man, for, truth to tell, the sameness of diet was beginning to tell on all of us: man may not require a variety of stimulants, but the stimulus of variety is at all times essential to his well-being. We were also able to extend our sphere of exercise; at first along the main and only road to the river; and then, with extreme caution, in other directions. This was an intense relief after having been cooped up so many months in such limited quarters; indeed we were in some respects worse off than Noah and his family when they left the ark. But though there was no miraculous intervention in our behalf, we were wonderfully protected from native hostility from without; what would have told fearfully against us was an epidemic of any sort, such as cholera, dysentery or typhoid; and that single case of Beri-beri, so acute and so rapidly fatal, afforded me great anxiety for many days afterwards. The sufferer was pitiable to behold; every secretion of the body was in abeyance, and there was a total suppression of water and comatose. I was preparing a dry bath of heated air, by means of very hot bricks that were to be placed under a chair on which the patient was to sit, enveloped in blankets. But time was not afforded to try this, the only plan that occurred to me. When he died, he was unable either to articulate or swallow; the latter process would in any case have been of slight use, since there was not a drug in the whole of the Pharmacopeia that could have saved him. There was indeed a species of “Mudar,” a plant with succulent leaves, that fringed the wells, and the juice expressed from it had a very beneficial effect upon the aforementioned ringworm: the complaint and its remedy were thus strangely in juxtaposition, one inside the well and the other outside.