the South-west Coast tribes, with their poultices and vapour baths, are very successful in treating it, more so than the true Negroes, with their clay plaster and baking method. Rheumatism is a disease the Africans seem especially liable to, whatever may be the local climate, whether it be that of the reeking Niger Delta, or the dry delightful climate of Cabinda; moreover, my friends who go whaling tell me the Bermuda negroes also suffer from rheumatism severely, and are "a perfect cuss," wanting to come and sit in the blood and blubber of fresh-killed whales. Small-pox is a vile scourge to Africa. The common treatment is to smear the body of the patient with the pulped leaves of the mzeuzil palm and with palm oil; but I cannot say the method is successful, save in preventing pitting, which it certainly does. The mortality from this disease, particularly among the South-west Coast tribes, is simply appalling. But it is extremely difficult to make the bush African realise that it is infectious, for he regards it as a curse from a great Nature spirit, sent in consequence of some sin, such as a man marrying within the restricted degree, or something of that kind. Mr. Dennett mentions small-pox patients being sent into the bush with more or less accommodation provided. Mr. Du Chaillu gave Mr. Fraser the idea that the Bakele tribe habitually drove their small-pox sick into the bush and neglected them, which certainly, from my knowledge of the tribe, I must say is not their constant habit by any means. I venture to think that this rough attempt at isolation among the Fjort is a remnant of the influence of the great Portuguese domination of the kingdom of Congo in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, when the Roman Catholic missionaries got hold of the Fjort as no other West African has since been got hold of. Never-
