Part 2
Strength of Women.--I believe there are few greater popular errors than the idea we have mainly derived from chivalrous times, that woman is a weakly creature. Julius C aesar, who judged for himself, took a very different view of the powers of certain women of the northern races, about whom he wrote. I suppose, that in the days of baronial castles, when crowds of people herded together like pigs within the narrow enclosures of a fortification and the ladies did nothing but needlework in their boudoirs, the mode of life wasvery prejudicial to their nervous system and muscular powers. The women suffered from the effects of ill ventilation and bad drainage, and had none of the counteracting advantages of the military life that was led by the males. Consequently women really became the helpless dolls that they were considered to be, and which it is still the fashion to consider them. It always seems to me that a hard-worked woman is better and happier for her work. It is in the nature of women to be fond of carrying weights; you may see them in omnibuses and carriages, always preferring to hold their baskets or their babies on their knees, to setting them down on the seats by their sides. A woman, whose modern dress includes I know not how many cubic feet of space, has hardly ever pockets of a sufficient size to carry small articles; for she prefers to load her hands with a bag or other weighty object. A nursery-maid, who is on the move all day, seems the happiest specimen of her sex; and, after her, a maid-of-all work who is treated fairly by her mistress.
OUTFIT.
It is impossible to include lists of outfit, in any reasonable space, that shall suit the various requirements of men engaged in expeditions of different magnitudes, who adopt different modes of locomotion, and who visit different countries and climates. I have therefore thought it best to describe only one outfit as a specimen, selecting for my example the desiderata for South Africa. In that country the traveller has, or had a few years ago, to take everything with him, for there were no civilised settlers, and the natural products of the country are of as little value in supplying his wants as those of any country can be. Again, South African wants are typical of those likely to be felt in every part of a large proportion of the region where rude travel is likely to be experienced, as in North Africa, in Australia, in Southern Siberia, and even in the prairies and pampas of North and South America. To make such an expedition effective all the articles included in the following lists may be considered as essential; I trust, on the other hand, that no article of real importance is omitted.
Stores for general use.--These are to a great degree independent of the duration of the journey.
Small Stores, various: -- lbs.
One or two very small soft-steel axes; a small file to sharpen them; a few additional tools (see chapter on Timber); spare butcher's knives..............................8 A dozen awls for wood and for leather, two of them in handles; two gimlets; a dozen sail-needles; three palms; a ball of sewing-twine; bit of beeswax; sewing-needles, assorted; a ball of black and white thread; buttons; two tailors' thimbles (see chapter on Cord, String, and Thread)......................................................3 Two penknives; small metal saw; bit of Turkey gone; large scissors; corkscrew..........................................1 1/2 Spring balances, from 1/4 lb. to 5 lbs. and from 1 lb. to 50 lbs. (or else a hand steelyard............................1 1/2 Fish-hooks of many sorts; cobbler's was; black silk; gut; two or more fishing-lines and floats; a large ball of line; thin brass wire, for springes (see chapters on Fishing and Trapping)........................................2 Ball of wicks, for lamps; candle-mould (see chapter on Candles); a few corks; lump of sulphur; amadou (see chapter on Fire).............................................1 1/2 Medicines (see chapter on Medicine); a scalpel; a blunt- pointed bistoury; and good forceps for thorns................1 A small iron, and an ironing-flannel; clothes-brush; bottle of Benzine or other scouring drops....................3 ______
Carried forward........................................21 1/2
Brought forward.................................................21 1/2 Bullet-mould, not a heavy one; bit of iron place for a ladle; gun-cleaning apparatus; turnscrews; nipple- wrench; bottle of fine oil; spare nipples; spare screw for cock (see chapter on Gun-Fittings).......................2 1/2 Two macintosh water-bags, shaped for the pack saddle, of one gallon each, with funnel-shaped necks, and having\ wide mouth (empty) (see chapter on Water for Drinking).......2 1/2 Composition for mending them, in two small bottles; and a spare piece of macintosh.....................................2 1/2 Spare leather, canvas, and webbing, for girths; rings and buckles.................................................20 Two small patrol-tents, poles, and pegs (see Chapter on Tents)......................................................30 Small inflatable pontoon to hold one, or even two men (see chapter on Rafts and Boats).................................10 Small bags for packing the various articles, independently of the saddle bags.......................................... 4 Macintosh sheeting overall, to keep the pack dry.................4 _______
Total weight of various small stores...................95
Heavy Stores, various: -- Pack saddles, spare saddlery (see chapter on Harness); bags for packing......................................... Water-vessels (see chapter on Water for Drinking)........... Heavy ammunition for sporting purposes. (1 lb. weight gives 10 shots. Otherwise each armed man is supposed to carry a long double-barrelled rifle of a very small bore, say of 70, and ammunition for these is allowed for below)............................................... _________
Total weight of various heavy stores...............
Stationery: -- Two ledgers; a dozen note-books (see chapter on Memoranda and Log-Books); paper..............................9 Ink; pens; pencils; sealing-wax; gum.............................2 1/2 Board to write upon...........................................2 Books to read, say equal to six vols. the ordinary size of novels; and maps..........................................7 1/2 Bags and cases...................................................3 Sketching-books, colours, and pencils............................6 _________
Total weight of stationery............................30
Mapping: -- Two sextants; horizon and roof; lantern; two pints of oil; azimuth compass; small aneroid; thermometers; tin-pot for boiling thermometers; watches (see chapter on Surveying Instruments)...........................18 Protractors; ruler; compasses; measuring-tape, etc.............. 3 Raper's Navigation; Nautical Almanac; Carr's Synopsis, published by Weale; small tables, and small almanacs; star maps..........................................4 Bags and baskets, well wadded....................................6 _________
Total weight of mapping materials.....................31
Natural History (for an occasional collector): -- Arsenical soap, 2 lbs.; camphor, 1/2 lb.; pepper, 1/2 lb.; bag of some powder to absorb blood, 2 lbs.; tow and cotton, about 10 lbs.; scalpel, forceps scissors, etc., 1/2 lb.; sheet brass, stamped for labels, 1/2 lb..............................................16 Pill-boxes; cork; insect-boxes; pins; tin, for catching and keeping and killing animals; nets for butterflies (say bags and all)..........................10 Geological hammers, lens, clinometer, etc....................... 4 Specimens. (I make no allowance for the weight of these, for they accumulate as stores are used up; and the total weight is seldom increased.).............. _______ Total weight of Natural History materials (for an occasional collector.......................30
Stores for Individual Use.
For each white man (independently of duration of journey): -- Clothes; macintosh rug; ditto sheet; blanket-bag; spare blanket...............................................30 Share of plates, knives, forks, spoons, pannikins, or bowls.................................................... 2 Share of cooking-things, from pots, coffee-mill kettles, etc................................................ 3 Spare knife, flints, steel, tinder-box, tinder, four pipes.................................................. 2 Bags, 6 lbs......................................................6 Provisions for emergency -- Five days of jerked meat, at 3 lbs. a day (on average).................................................15 Two quarts of water (on average), 4 lbs.; share of kegs, 1 1/2 lb............................................8
_________
Total for each white man.............................66
For each white man, and for each six months: -- Tea and coffee, 9 lbs.; tobacco, 6 lbs; salt, 6 lbs.; pepper, 1 lb................................................22 Brandy or rum, occasionally served out...........................6 White sugar, 2 lbs.; arrowroot, 1 lb.; dried onions, etc., 3 lbs..................................................6 Ammunition for small-bored rifles, with reserve powder and caps..............................................9
_________
Total for six months (or at the rate of 7 lbs. per month)..............43
For each black man (independently of duration of journey): -- Bedding, etc.................................................... 9 Meat and water for emergencies, as above (about)................19 Share of cooking-things......................................... 2
_________
Total for each black man.............................30
For each black man, and for each six months: -- Tobacco, 6 lbs.; salt, pepper, etc., 5 lbs......................11 Presents which will have to be made him from time to time... ....6
_________
Total for six months (or at the rate of 3 lbs. per month).............17
Presents and Articles for Payment.--It is of the utmost importance to a traveller to be well and judiciously supplied with these: they are his money, and without money a person can no more travel in Savagedom than in Christendom. It is a great mistake to suppose that savages will give their labour or cattle in return for anything that is bright or new: they have their real wants and their fashions as much as we have; and, unless what a traveller brings, meets either the one or the other, he can get nothing from them, except through fear or compulsion.
The necessities of a savage are soon satisfied; and, unless he belongs to a nation civilised enough to live in permanent habitations, and secure from plunder, he cannot accumulate, but is only able to keep what he actually is able to carry about his own person. Thus, the chief at Lake Ngami told Mr. Andersson that his beads would be of little use, for the women about the place already "grunted like pigs" under the burdens of those that they wore, and which they had received from previous travellers. These are matters of serious consideration to persons who propose to travel with a large party, and who must have proportionably large wants.
Speaking of presents and articles for payment, as of money, it is essential to have a great quantity and variety of small change, wherewith the traveller can pay for small services, for carrying messages, for draughts of milk, pieces of meat, etc. Beads, shells, tobacco, needles, awls, cotton caps, handkerchiefs, clasp-knives, small axes, spear and arrow heads, generally answer this purpose.
There is infinite fastidiousness shown by savages in selecting beads, which, indeed, are their jewellery; so that valuable beads, taken at hap-hazard, are much more likely to prove failures than not. It would always be well to take abundance (40 or 50 lbs. weight goes but a little way) of the following cheap beads, as they are very generally accepted,--dull white, dark blue, and vermilion red, all of a small size.
It is the ignorance of what are the received articles of payment in a distant country, and the using up of those that are taken, which, more than any other cause, limits the journeyings of an explorer: the demands of each fresh chief are an immense drain upon his store.
Summary.--To know the minimum weight for which a proposed expedition must find means of transport, the omitted figures must be supplied in the following schedule, the others must be corrected where required, and the whole must be added together.
Stores for general use:--
Various small stores 95 lbs. Various heavy stores Stationery 30 Mapping 31 Natural History (occasional) 30
Stores for Individual use:--
For each white man (at rate of 7 lbs. per month) 66
For each black man (at rate of 3 lbs. per month 30
Presents and articles of payment are usually of far greater weight than all the above things put together.
TOTAL WEIGHT TO BE CARRIED BY EXPEDITION 282
Mem.--If meat and bread, and the like, have to be carried, a very large addition of weight must be made to this list, for the weight of a daily ration varies from 3 lbs., or even 4 lbs., to 2 lbs., according to the concentration of nutriment in the food that is used. Slaughter animals carry themselves; but the cattle-watchers swell the list of those who have to be fed.
Means of Transport.--In order to transport the articles belonging to an expedition across a wild and unknown country, we may estimate as follows:--
Beasts of burthen:--
An ass will not usually care more than about (net weight) 65 lbs. A small mule 90 A horse 100 An ox of an average greed 120 A camel (which rarely can be used by an explorer) 300
It is very inconvenient to take more than six pack-animals in a caravan that has to pass over broken country, for so much time is lost by the whole party in re-adjusting the packs of each member of it, whenever one gets loose, that its progress is seriously retarded.
Carriages.--An animal--camels always excepted--draws upon wheels in a wild country about two and a half times the weight he can carry.
lbs. A light cart, exclusive of the driver, should not carry more than..................................................800 A light waggon, such as one or two horses would trot away with, along a turnpike road, not more than...........1500 A waggon of the strongest construction, not more than.........3000
Weight of Rations.--A fair estimate in commissariat matters is as follows:-- A strong waggon full of food carries 1000 full-day rations The pack of an ox " 40 " The pack of a horse " 30 " A slaughter ox yields, as fresh meat 80 " A fat sheep yields " 10 " (N.B. Meat when jerked loses about one-half of its nourishing powers.)
MEDICINE.
General Remarks.--Travellers are apt to expect too much from their medicines, and to think that savages will hail them as demigods wherever they go. But their patients are generally cripples who want to be made whole in a moment, and other suchlike impracticable cases. Powerful emetics, purgatives, and eyewashes are the most popular physickings.
The traveller who is sick away from help, may console himself with the proverb, that "though there is a great difference between a good physician and a bad one, there is very little between a good one and none at all."
Drugs and Instruments.--Outfit of Medicines,--A traveller, unless he be a professed physician, has no object in taking a large assortment of drugs. He wants a few powders, ready prepared; which a physician, who knows the diseases of the country in which he is about to travel, will prescribe for him. Those in general use are as follows:--
1. Emetic, mild; 2. ditto, very powerful, for poison (sulphate of zinc, also used as an eye-wash in Ophthalmia). e. Aperient, mild; 4. ditto, powerful. 5. Cordial for diarrhoea. 6. Quinine for ague. 7. Sudorific (Dover's powder). 8. Chlorodyne. 9. Camphor. 10. Carbolic acid.
In addition to these powders, the traveller will want Warburg's fever-drops; glycerine or cold cream; mustard-paper for blistering; heartburn lozenges; lint; a small roll of diachylon; lunar-caustic, in a proper holder, to touch old sores with, and for snake-bites; a scalpel and a blunt-pointed bistoury, with which to open abcesses (the blades of these should be waxed, to keep them from rust); a good pair of forceps, to pull out thorns; a couple of needles, to sew up gashes; waxed thread, or better, silver wire. A mild effervescing aperient, like Moxon's is very convenient. Seidlitz-powders are perhaps a little too strong for frequent use in a tropical climate.
How to carry Medicines.--The medicines should be kept in zinc pill-boxes with a few letters punched both on their tops and bottoms, to indicate what they contain, as Emet., Astr. etc. It is more important that the bottoms of the boxes should be labelled than their tops; because when two of them have been opened at the same time, it often happens that the tops run a risk of being changed.
It will save continual trouble with weights and scales, if the powders be so diluted with flour, that one Measureful of each shall be a full average dose for an adult; and if the measure to which they are adopted be cylindrical, and of such a size as just to admit a common lead-pencil, and of a determined length, it can at any time be replaced by twisting up a paper cartridge. I would further suggest that the powders be differently coloured, one colour being used for emetics and another for aperients.
Lint, to make.--Scrape a piece of linen with a knife.
Ointment.--Simple cerate, which is spread on lint as a soothing plaister for sores, consists of equal parts of oil and wax; but lard may be used as a substitute for the wax.
Seidlitz-powders are not often to be procured in the form we are accustomed to take them in, in England; so a recipe for making 12 sets of them, is annexed:--1 1/2 oz. of Carbonate of Soda and 3 oz. of Tartarised Soda, for the blue papers; 7 drachms of Tartaric Acid, for the white papers.
Bush Remedies.--Emetics.--For want of proper physic, drink a charge of gunpowder in a tumblerful of warm water of soap-suds, and tickle the throat.
Vapour-baths are used in many countries, and the following plan, used in Russia, is often the most convenient. Heat stones in the fire, and put them on the ground in the middle of the cabin or tent; on these pour a little water, and clouds of vapour are given off. In other parts of the world branches are spread on hot wood-embers, and the patient is placed upon these, wrapped in a large cloth; water is then sprinkled on the embers, and the patient is soon covered with a cloud of vapour. The traveller who is chilled or over-worked, and has a day of rest before him, would do well to practise this simple and pleasant remedy.
Bleeding and Cupping'.--Physicians say, now-a-days that bleeding is rarely, if ever, required; and that frequently it does much harm; but they used to bleed for everything. Many savages know how to cup: they commonly use a piece ofa horn as the cup, and they either suck at a hole in the top of the horn, to produce the necessary vacuum, or they make a blaze as we do, but with a wisp of grass.
Illnesses.--Fevers of all kinds, diarrhoea, and rheumatism, are the plagues that most afflict travellers; ophthalmia often threatens them. Change of air, from the flat country up into the hills, as soon as the first violence of the illness is past, works wonders in hastening and perfecting a cure.
Fever.--The number of travellers that have fallen victims to fever in certain lands is terrible: it is a matter of serious consideration whether any motives, short of imperious duty, justify a person in braving a fever-stricken country. In the ill-fated Niger expedition, three vessels were employed, of which the 'Albert' stayed the longest time in the river, namely two months and two days. Her English crew consisted of 62 men; of these, 55 caught fever in the river, and 23 died. Of the remaining seven, only two ultimately escaped scot-free; the others suffering, more or less severely, on their return to England. In Dr. McWilliams's Medical History of this expedition, it is laid down that the Niger fever, which may be considered as a type of pestilential fever generally, usually sets in sixteen days after exposure to the malaria; and that one attack, instead of acclimatising the patient, seems to render him all the more liable to a second. Every conceivable precaution known in those days, had been taken to ensure the health of the crew of the 'Albert.' A great discovery of modern days is the power of quinine to keep off many types of fever. A person would, now, have little to fear in taking a passage in a Niger steamer; supposing that vessels ran regularly up that river. The quinine he would take, beginning at the coast, would render him proof against fever, until he had passed the delta; but nothing would remove the risk of a long sojourn in the delta itself. However, I should add that Dr. Livingstone's experience on the zambesi throws doubt on the power of quinine to keep off the type of fever that prevails upon that river.
Precautions in unhealthy Places.--There are certain precautions which should be borne in mind in unhealthy places, besides that which I have just mentioned of regularly taking small doses of quinine, such as never to encamp to the leeward of a marsh; to sleep close in between large fires, with a handkerchief gathered round your face (natural instinct will teach this); to avoid starting too early in the morning; and to beware of unnecessary hunger, hardship, and exposure. It is a widely-corroborated fact that the banks of a river and adjacent plains are often less affected by malaria than the low hills that overlook them.
Diarrhoea.--With a bad diarrhoea, take nothing but broth, rice water, and it may be rice, in very small quantities at a meal, until you are quite restored. The least piece of bread or meat causes an immediate relapse.
Ophthalmia'.--Sulphate of zinc is invaluable as an eyewash: for ophthalmia is a scourge in parts of North and South Africa, in Australia, and in many other countries. The taste of the solution which should be strongly astringent, is the best guide to its strength.
Tooth-ache.--Tough diet tries the teeth so severely, that a man about to undergo it, should pay a visit to a dentist before he leaves England. An unskilled traveller is very likely to make a bad job of a first attempt at tooth-drawing. By constantly pushing and pulling an aching tooth, it will in time loosen, and perhaps, after some weeks, come out.
Thirst.--Pour water over the clothes of the patient, and keep them constantly wet; restrain his drinking, after the first few minutes, as strictly as you can summon heart to do it. (See "Thirst" in the chapter on "Water.") In less severe cases, drink water with a tea-spoon; it will satisfy a parched palate as much as if you gulped it down in tumblerfuls, and will disorder the digestion very considerably less.
Hunger.--Give two or three mouthfuls, every quarter of an hour, to a man reduced to the last extremity by hunger; strong broth is the best food for him.
Poisoning.--The first thing is to give a powerful emetic, that whatever poison still remains unabsorbed in the stomach, may be thrown up. Use soap-suds or gunpowder (see Emetics) if proper emetics are not at hand. If there be violent pains and gripings, or retchings, give plenty of water to make the vomitings more easy. Next, do your best to combat the symptoms that are caused by the poison which was absorbed before the emetic acted. Thus, if the man's feet are cold and numbed, put hot stones against them, and wrap them up warmly. If he be drowsy, heavy, and stupid, give brandy and strong coffee, and try to rouse him. There is nothing more to be done, save to avoid doing mischief.
Fleas.--"Italian flea-powder," sold in the East, is really efficacious. It is the powdered "Pire oti" (or flea-bane), mentioned in Curzon's 'Armenia' as growing in that country; it has since become an important article of export. A correspondent writes to me, "I have often found a light cotton or linen bag a great safeguard against the attacks of fleas. I used to creep into it, draw the loop tight round my neck, and was thus able to set legions of them at defiance."