The heart of Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)Schweinfurth, Georg August
Science
The heart of Africa, Vol. 1 (of 2)
Schweinfurth, Georg August
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Schweinfurth, Georg August, 1836-1925 -- Travel -- Africa, Central
I was very much surprised, at the beginning of the rainy season, at
the large number of chameleons which at intervals clustered themselves
upon the sprouting foliage. The common African sort grows to a very
unusual size, and I saw several which could hardly be less than ten
inches long. Scarcely less abundant is the smaller and slimmer species
(_C. lævigatus_), which does not exhibit quite to the same extent the
changes of its colour. Rolling its eyes in a very remarkable manner it
answered the same purpose as the agama, with its nodding head, of
getting up a joke against the Mohammedan fanatics. “What is a
chameleon like?” I used to ask them, and not over delighted were they
when they were told that the chameleon, with its one eye up and the
other eye down, was a faki looking up to God in heaven, but at the
same time keeping a sharp look-out upon the dollars of earth.
[Sidenote: VALUE OF QUININE.]
Thoroughly free, as I have said, from fever, during March and April, I
persevered in taking my daily dose of ten grains or more of quinine;
but as the heat diminished, and as the rainy season at its height was
not so full of miasma, I gradually diminished, and in June and July
entirely gave up my uniform administration of the tonic. But quinine
still remained my sole medicine, my only resort in every contingency.
If ever I got a chill, if ever I was wet through, or was troubled with
any symptoms of indigestion, I lost no time in using it, knowing that
for any traveller in a region such as this, any indisposition whatever
is simply a doorway through which fever insidiously creeps and effects
its dangerous lodgment. Any sudden giddiness in the head, or any spasm
between the shoulders, or any failure in the functions of the limbs
were all, I do not doubt, warnings of the ill-omened visitor, which I
accepted in time to avert. Not only, as I have remarked, were fevers
here quite common, but my own attendant, who had accompanied me from
Alexandria, was prostrated some days by a very serious attack, and his
condition of health was so much impaired that he had to be sent back
on the next return of the boats. There were others, too, of my own
people who had to endure attacks of less severity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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