The men have much to consider as they cower around the watch-fire, and little time for deliberation. They are at their furthest point from home and their leader has fallen at their head; we shall see presently how they faced their difficulties. * * * * * Several inquiries will naturally arise on reading this distressing history; the foremost, perhaps, will be with regard to the entire absence of everything like a parting word to those immediately about him, or a farewell line to his family and friends at home. It must be very evident to the reader that Livingstone entertained very grave forebodings about his health during the last two years of his life, but it is not clear that he realized the near approach of death when his malady suddenly passed into a more dangerous stage. It may be said, "Why did he not take some precautions or give some strict injunctions to his men to preserve his note-books and maps, at all hazards, in the event of his decease? Did not his great ruling passion suggest some such precaution?" Fair questions, but, reader, you have all--every word written, spoken, or implied. Is there, then, no explanation? Yes; we think past experience affords it, and it is offered to you by one who remembers moreover how Livingstone himself used to point out to him in Africa the peculiar features of death by malarial poisoning. In full recollection of eight deaths in the Zambesi and Shiré districts, not a single parting word or direction in any instance can be recalled. Neither hope nor courage give way as death approaches. In most cases a comatose state of exhaustion supervenes, which, if it be not quickly arrested by active measures, passes into complete insensibility: this is almost invariably the closing scene. In Dr. Livingstone's case we find some departure from the ordinary symptoms.[35] He, as we have seen by the entry of the 18th April was alive to the conviction that malarial poison is the basis of every disorder in Tropical Africa, and he did not doubt but that he was fully under its influence whilst suffering so severely. As we have said, a man of less endurance in all probability would have perished in the first week of the terrible approach to the Lake, through the flooded country and under the continual downpour that he describes. It tried every constitution, saturated every man with fever poison, and destroyed several, as we shall see a little further on. The greater vitality in his iron system very likely staved off for a few days the last state of coma to which we refer, but there is quite sufficient to show us that only a thin margin lay between the heavy drowsiness of the last few days before reaching Chitambo's and the final and usual symptom that brings on unconsciousness and inability to speak.