The cause of this prodigious mortality appears in the records of the expedition. Officers and men were all raw, unseasoned, and unacclimatized. Captain Tuckey, an able navigator, the author of "Maritime Geography and Statistics," had served in the tropics; his biographer, however, writes that a long imprisonment in France and "residence in India had broken down his constitution, and at the age of thirty (ob. æt. thirty-nine) his hair was grey and his head nearly bald." The men perished, exactly like the missionaries of old, by hard work, insufficient and innutritious food, physical exhaustion, and by the doctor. At first "immediate bleeding and gentle cathartics" are found to be panaceas for mild fevers (p. 46): presently the surgeon makes a discovery as follows: "With regard to the treatment I shall here only observe that bleeding was particularly unsuccessful. Cathartics were of the greatest utility, and calomel, so administered as speedily to induce copious salivation, generally procured a remission of all the violent symptoms." The phlebotomy was inherited from the missioners, who own almost to have blinded themselves by it. When one was "blooded" fifteen times and died, his amateur Sangrado said, "It had been better to have bled him thirty times:" the theory was that in so hot a climate all the European blood should be replaced by African. One of the entries in Captain Tuckey's diary is, "Awaking extremely unwell, I directly swallowed five grains of calomel"--a man worn out by work and sleeping in the open air! The "Congo" sloop was moored in a reach surrounded by hills, instead of being anchored in mid stream where the current of water creates a current of air; those left behind in her died of palm wine, of visits from native women, and of exposure to the sun by day and to the nightly dews. On the line of march the unfortunate marines wore pigtails and cocked hats; stocks and cross-belts; tight-fitting, short-waisted red coats, and knee- breeches with boots or spatter-dashes--even the stout Lord Clyde in his latest days used to recall the miseries of his march to Margate, and declare that the horrid dress gave him more pain than anything he afterwards endured in a life-time of marching. None seemed capable of calculating what amount of fatigue and privation the European system is able to support in the tropics. And thus they perished, sometimes of violent bilious remittents, more often of utter weariness and starvation. Peace to their manes!--they did their best, and "angels can no more." They played for high stakes, existence against fame-- "But the fair guerdon when we hope to find, Comes the blind Fury with th' abhorred shears, And slits the thin-spun life."