I was compelled to linger out the remainder of February and the greater part of March in camp upon the little island, pending the arrival of the bearers who were to help me onwards to Ghattas’s Seriba. I was happy in escaping any ill effects such as might be dreaded from a protracted residence by this unhealthy river. I attributed my immunity in great measure to the precautionary use of quinine. Although by my daily occupations, botanising in swamps and continually wading amongst papyrus clumps, I had been more exposed to malaria than many others, I experienced no sickness. I swallowed every day, in three doses, eight or nine grains of quinine, enclosed for that purpose in gelatine capsules; this method is to be strongly recommended to every traveller, since the intense bitterness of the medicine taken in its undisguised form may excite a degree of nausea which, I can well believe, may contribute its part to a liability to fever. This treatment I continued, without its having any ill effect upon my constitution, until I could dispense with it in the purer air of the interior. I suppose, since this is not an universal experience, that the effects of the alkaloids may vary with different patients, and therefore it would be well for every one first to test the susceptibility of his individual constitution. It is only too well known how many victims this treacherous climate has already claimed; it may without exaggeration be maintained, that half the travellers who have ventured into the swamps have succumbed to fever. The highest mortality was in the settlements of the Austrian mission in Gondokoro and St. Cross, now long since abandoned. Miss Tinné’s expedition of 1863 suffered the loss of five out of its nine European members, among them my unfortunate predecessor in the botanical investigation of this district, Dr. Steudner, who died suddenly quite at the beginning of the journey. Heuglin, too, lost the greater part of his valuable time in continual relapses of fever. The foundations of these miserable attacks had probably been laid in the miasma, of which the traveller had inhaled the poison during a protracted sojourn in the Meshera. The latest Job’s comfort, which had most unnerved me, had come just as I was embarking at Trieste. The French Geographical Society had, a few months previously, sent out Le Saint, a naval officer, on a voyage of discovery, having for its object the same district as myself, viz., the Niam-niam countries. His outward journey had been much lengthened by the grass obstruction in the Giraffe stream, and he died before he entered the country in which his more extended wanderings were designed to commence. Before quitting the Meshera (the only landing-place for expeditions starting from the Gazelle) I will make a few observations on the natural character, scenery, and inhabitants of the region of this unique island world.