we found no such tickling or irritation on our legs as we had done at Loheia, probably because the soil was here less impregnated with salt.
We observed here, for the first time, three remarkable circumstances shewing the increase of heat. I had carried with me several steel plates for making screws of different sizes. The heat had so swelled the pin, or male screw, that it was cut nearly one-third through by the edge of the female. The sealing-wax, of which we had procured a fresh parcel from the India ships, was fully more fluid, while lying in our boxes, than tar. The third was the colour of the spirit in the thermometer, which was quite discharged, and sticking in masses at unequal heights, while the liquor was clear like spring-water.
Masuah is very unwholesome, as, indeed, is the whole coast of the Red Sea from Suez to Babelmandeb, but more especially between the tropics. Violent fevers, called there nedad, make the principal figure in this fatal list, and generally terminate the third day in death. If the patient survives till the fifth day, he very often recovers by drinking water only, and throwing a quantity of cold water upon him, even in his bed, where he is permitted to lie without attempting to make him dry, or change his bed, till another deluge adds to the first.
There is no remedy so sovereign here as the bark; but it must be given in very different times and manners from those pursued in Europe. Were a physician to take time to prepare his patient for the bark, by first giving him purgatives, he would be dead of the fever before his preparation
