haustion made me retire from contemplating it.
Crawling rather than walking, clinging to bush after bush to save myself from falling, I made my way along the river-bank in search of some wild fruit to sustain me. I had not gone far before I spied out a fruit hanging down from a half-withered stem. I threw up some stones and brought it down, and sure that its thin yellow shell covered a sweet fleshy pulp, I greedily swallowed it, when all at once it occurred to me that the seeds bore a great resemblance to nux vomica; my fear was only too well founded, in a very few minutes I was seized with a most violent sickness, and sunk powerless and prostrate to the ground. It was some time before I could rouse myself sufficiently to creep to the bank of the Zambesi, where I took a large draught of the clear water, which revived me very considerably. To attract the attention of my friends I fired off several shots, but receiving no response had to resign myself to wait awhile.
After about half an hour I felt so far recovered that I ventured to make a move, and had hardly proceeded more than fifty yards when I saw one of our party coming in my direction. We returned together, and before night set in we had chosen our position beneath three wide-spreading trees, rather more than a quarter of a mile from the river, and about half a mile from the falls, and proceeded to erect our “skerms.”
Skerms is the name given to the screens that are put up every night for protection against wild beasts. In districts infested by buffaloes, elephants, or lions, travellers erect one or more of them according to their numbers; they are
