Once more we settled down to the routine life of the camp, but it became plainer every day that, as there was no sign of the drought breaking up, there was very little hope of satisfactory work until another year. The skies were still brazen, and vegetation was failing more and more. The sweet potato crop had utterly failed. Those in store had long been consumed, and the natives were absolutely starving round us. It was no use for them to plant another crop of sweet potatoes until the rain should come, and they were wandering sadly all over the forest seeking what sustenance they could. Their strength was failing, and their privations were beginning to tell in terrible emaciation. It was pitiful to see the starving creatures come into camp, most of them mere skin and bone. Their children, of course, felt the pinch hardest, and there were many deaths. To see their condition one could hardly believe that they would ever recover, but they bore it all with a wonderful stoicism. Occasionally they would try to catch a pig in their corrals. [Illustration: NATIVE WOMEN AT DINAWA. The background is the roof and side of the author’s house. ] The Dinawa people would also come to me for medicine, and would constitute me their physician for small complaints, such as headache, but I had to be very careful in this respect, for I found out that often they wanted medicine when nothing was the matter. This recalls to me an amusing incident of this period connected with my minor Æsculapian dealings. One morning Doboi, Martu, and Ow-bow came in, saying that Doboi’s mother was ill. On being questioned as to her symptoms, they told me that she was aching all over her body, and her head was particularly painful. Beyond these details we could not find out anything, and as the woman was some distance off, and it was not convenient to go that day, we gave them a headache compound and sent them off with it. Later in the afternoon the boys returned and told us that Ow-bow’s mother was dead, but the tidings were not so alarming as at first appeared; for they added that “her head was dead but her stomach was alive,” from which I understood that she was unconscious. The neighbouring Roman Catholic missionary, on hearing this, said that he would go over the following day. These cases were not new to him; in fact, he told us that fainting was quite common. Obviously, the dead head and the live stomach was a simple instance of swooning.