e taking flight
into the mountains.

Other companies of them had taken shelter under the matted hair which
hangs from the flanks of the camel; and when the pitiless driver
persisted in dislodging them, they departed with a plaintive cry, to
seek an asylum with a camel whose driver was more hospitable. A
sentinel had found one in his pocket during the night, but it paid
dearly for its lodging--he roasted it for his supper! These poor birds
had fled from the rigours of a European winter, to find cold as severe
in the heart of Africa. Alas! how many of us felt that, like the
swallows, we had exiled ourselves to improve our fortunes, and were
now in danger of perishing. How gladly would we have resigned all our
hopes of glory and advantage for the fireside of the modest paternal
dwelling!

But before night we encamped in the shelter of the mountains; the
chiah, which grew in abundance around us, enabled us to kindle fires,
and a salutary reaction took place in the spirits of the troops.
According to a common practice of mine, I invited to supper the man
whose life I had saved by frightening him into exertion. After
swallowing a glass of warm wine, well sugared, and spiced with
tincture of cinnamon, he licked his lips, sucked the edges of his
glass, and said: 'Thank ye, doctor; but for you I should have been
dead,' with a naivete which I can never forget, and which even now
mingles pleasing associations with the thoughts of those days of
suffering.

The next day nearly 200 of the men were affected with partial or total
blindness. Some had merely a sensation like fatigue of the visual
organs, with heaviness, watering, and inflammation of the conjunctive
membrane. But with others the pain was acute, the eye much inflamed,
and the cornea covered with minute ulcerations. Those who were more
slightly affected, marched like persons enveloped in a cloud of smoke,
and trying to see their way out of it; they took a few steps with
their eyes shut, then half opened them with evident pain to
reconnoitre the ground before them, and quickly closed them again. But
many had for the time wholly lost their sight; they stumbled on the
tufts of halfa, and rolled on the ground, so that we were obliged to
hoist them on the cacolets. The general, in a state of much
uneasiness, called a council of such members of the military corps of
health as were found in his column. Some were of opinion that this
epidemic was occasioned by the sudden cold,