Feverish dreams

The railway from Pretoria to Maputo was built under horrific conditions. One of the main obstacles was the Crocodile Gorge, a deep, narrow valley lined with granite outcrops and thick with malaria. So many men fell sick that Dr Williams, the camp medic, started a pool to which each patient contributed one shilling a day. The man with the highest temperature of the day took the pot. Chief engineer George Pauling noted in his memoir, Chronicles of a Contractor, that many of the men, despite being “off their heads” with illness, would ask, as soon as the fever broke, who had won the day’s pot.