Originally published as Ruwan Bagaja, The Water of Cure is a quest story whose hero experiences many adventures on his various travels, translated from the Hausa language of Nigeria.

    By all accounts, these Boers are only part human. There is an ambulance outfit on board, and I ask an ambulance orderly--a retired sergeant-major of British infantry--whether the Boers will fire on the ambulances. He says: "Of course, they'll fire on the hambulances. The 'ave no respect for the 'elpless. They've even been known to fire on the cavalry." Colonel Williams, commander of our hospital outfit, fully believes this, and is training his men in rifleshooting at a box towed over the stern, and with revolvers at bottles thrown overside. No one has as yet sunk a bottle, and some of the shooters have even missed the Indian Ocean. Approaching Africa. Few of the Australians on board have ever been away from Australia; but the English, Irish and Scotch are developing national rivalries. A party of Highlanders (quite distinct from the Scotch) are holding some sort of a celebration. They ask an Australian named Robertson whether his ancestors were Highlanders. He says: "No; but for ignorance and squalid savagery, I will back my ancestors against any Highlanders in the world." Luckily for him, the Highlanders on board all belong to different units and different clans. This Robertson apparently knows something about Highlanders, for he says: "If they started anything against me, they'd be fighting each other before you could say knife." First experience of the troubles of active service with green troops on board a ship. The army medical men came aboard a day earlier than anyone else and barricaded themselves in a square of the ship. They closed two doors of access to other parts of the ship, commandeered all the hammocks they could lay their hands on, and sat tight. A squadron of cursing Lancers fought and struggled in the alleyways, and traffic was, to put it mildly, congested. The men who went short of hammocks had a few well-chosen words to say, but the P.M.O. battled nobly for his men and said that, if the doors were opened and a thoroughfare made of his camping-grounds, he would not have enough equipment left to bind up a sore thumb. The machine-gun section wanted an acre of deck for their drills, and the signallers wanted the same area. All stores were below decks and could only be got at by one of the three great powers--the chief officer, the boatswain and the carpenter. Consequently, everybody followed the chief officer, the boatswain and the carpenter about like lost lambs. Thus we fared across the Indian Ocean, toiling, rejoicing, and borrowing gear and equipment--generally without the knowledge or consent of the lender. Another diary extract runs: November 3Oth--At Capetown. Met my first Boer prisoner. He is a doctor, holding an English degree, and can make a fifty break at billiards. Apparently these Boers are at any rate partially civilized. He says that, if the Boers catch our hospital orderlies with rifles in the ambulances, they will be entitled to shoot them. He evidently looks on us as less civilized than his own people--the poor fish. He got hurt in some way during a raid and the British are only keeping him till he is fit to go back.

    Nesbitt was a mining engineer. In 1928 he made an adventurous journey, of which this book tells the story, through districts in Abyssinia which were among those parts of Africa least known to the outside world. No European to attempt the journey before had survived, but Nesbitt succeeded in accomplishing it with the loss of only three members of his party. Nesbitt placed at the disposal of the Royal Geo¬graphical Society many notes, sketches, and maps, and in 1931 the Council of the Society awarded him the Murchison Grant in recognition of his notable feat. His death was strangely ironical, since he died in a Dutch air liner crash in Switzerland on his way back from Abyssinia in 1935.