STAY AT SAY 327 Osman on purpose that he should repeat it, that we would go and fetch the sheep from Say for ourselves, was immediately successful, for the next day the best and cheapest animals we had yet procured were brought to us. We never ate better mutton before or since.

Whilst the market was going on, Taburet used to prescribe for many natives who came to consult him. But carelessness and ignorance work terrible havoc among the negroes everywhere. There would be plenty for a doctor to do who cared to study diseases now become rare in civilized countries. From amongst the patients who came to Taburet, a grand or rather terrible list of miraculous cures might have been drawn up. These patients included men and women suffering from tubercular and syphilitic diseases, which had been allowed to run their dread course unchecked by any remedies whatever ; many too were blind or afflicted with goitre and elephantiasis, whilst there were numerous lepers. Few, however, were troubled with nervous complaints. It was indeed difficult to prescribe for such cases as came before the good doctor ; indeed it would often have been quite impossible for his instructions to be carried out. Many poor cripples came from a long distance to consult the white doctor, expecting to be made whole immediately, when they were really incurable. Where, however, would have been the good of prescribing cleanliness, when one of their most used remedies is to smear any wound with mud and cow-dung mixed together, the eyes of ophthalmic patients even being treated with the horrible stuff? Where would be the good of ordering them nourishing food such as gravy beef, when they are too poor to get it ? Good wine ? Even if we could have supplied them with it, they would have flung it away with horror, for they are Mussulmans. Quinine then ? Its bitterness would have made them suspect poison. They all came expecting