Page:In Desert and Wilderness (Sienkiewicz, tr. Drezmal).djvu/325

 Rh "There is none. On Victoria Nyanza this disease depopulates whole villages. Sometimes more severely, sometimes less. It most frequently takes hold of the people of the villages situated in the underwood on the banks."

The sun had passed to the western sky, but still before night Linde had related to Stas his history. He was a son of a merchant of Zurich. His family came from Karlsruhe, but from the year 1848 had resided in Switzerland. His father amassed a great fortune in the silk trade. He educated his son for an engineer, but young Henry was attracted from early youth by travel. After completing his studies in a polytechnical school, having inherited his father's entire fortune, he undertook his first journey to Egypt. It was before the Mahdi's time, so he reached as far as Khartûm, and hunted with Dongolese in the Sudân. After that he devoted himself to the geography of Africa and acquired such an expert knowledge of it that many geographical societies enrolled him among their members. This last journey, which was to end so disastrously for him, began in Zanzibar. He had reached as far as the Great Lakes and intended to penetrate into Abyssinia along the Karamojo Mountains, which up to that time were unknown, and from there to proceed to the ocean coast. But the natives of Zanzibar refused to go any farther. Fortunately, or unfortunately, there was a war between the kings of Uganda and Unyoro. Linde rendered important services to the king of Uganda, who in exchange for them presented him with over two hundred bodyguards. This greatly facilitated the journey and the visit to the Karamojo Mountains, but afterwards smallpox appeared in the ranks, after that the dreadful sleeping sickness, and finally the wreck of the caravan.

Linde possessed considerable supplies of various kinds