as healthy. Of its climate I have Spoken already. Buea,
however, has this advantage over De Buncha, that it has
a fine water-supply, the finest, indeed as far as is at present
known, the only considerable water supply above 2,000
feet on the mountain. When one is in Victoria, particularly
in the evening of a hot rainless day, you can see a great band
o f white mist girdling the mountain where the water-laden hot
air rising from the forest and swamps meets the cold air of
the upper mountain, which condensing, must cause it to
•deposit, not only the water, but the exhalations from the swamp
lands, and every morning and evening you see great whiffs of
mist coming up one of the forests on the foot-hills round
Victoria, making the whole district look as if it were a great
smouldering fire. The difficulty of getting a sick man up to
•either Buea or De Buncha would at present be great:, but
.granting these difficulties removed, as one will be when the
road to Buea is completed, I do not think that when a fever
patient got up above the 3,000 feet level he would find much
benefit, and he would run great risk of chill and dysentery. I
regard this idea of the possibility of finding an elevated situation
in West Africa suitable for a sanatorium, as one of the
most dangerous the governmental authorities suffer from,
for it induces them to build houses in out-of-the-way places,
.and send men suffering from fever to them to die, robbing the
sick man of his great chance of recovery, namely, getting out
to sea. The tiue sanatorium for the Coast would be a hospital
vessel attached to each district, but as this is practically impossible,
the next best thing would be for the indefatigable
Mr. A. L. Jones and Messrs. Elder Dempster to have a special
hospital cabin on every one of their vessels. The drawback
to this is that getting out to a vessel through the Gold
Coast surf would be risky work for a, sick man, and in the
Rivers the mail steamers have to go from one mangrove
swamp river to another, and into places like Forcados,
where, owing to Lagos Bar’s iniquities, vessels are detained for
days, lying idle in the sweltering heat waiting for cargo.
Below the Rivers, on the South West-Coast, these objections
would only hold to a lesser extent, but then the South-West
•Coast is by no means so much in need of sanatoriums, and the
white men living there are fewer and more scattered than on
the West Coast or in the Rivers. There is another plan which
might work well for Lagos and the Oil Rivers, and that is to
have hospital hulks anchored outside. The experience of
the French guard-ship Minerve seems to show that this would
be a repaying plan, particularly if it were not combined with
the French therapeutic methods, which have an immense
amount of dash and go in them, and I dare say if a man were
in rude health he might undergo them with little permanent
injury to his constitution.
The next excitement after cruising in the bay was the
arrival of the Nachtigal early in the morning. Of course I
packed furiously, and when I was quite ready found her
arrival had nothing to do with going to Calabar ; she had
brought round the Governor from Cameroons, he having been,
I am sorry to say, nearly dead with fever. With him came
my old friend Doctor Plehn, and I heard sad news of the
numbers of bad fever cases in Cameroon River since I had left
it, and the Doctor, who had been anxiously expected here for
some time, flew hither and thither and rapidly repaired the
health of’Victoria.
Herr von Puttkamer kindly asked me to breakfast on board
the Nachtigal, and confirmed Herr von Lucke’s statement
about my being welcome to go round in her to Calabar. He
said as soon as he got back to Cameroons he should be sending
her round with the Commissioner.
I had a very pleasant afternoon, and got a good deal of
material for a work on the Natural History of Governors
which I do not intend to publish, but I will just state that all the
West Coast Governors, whatever may be the nation they
represent, are exceedingly good society. The Governor of
Cameroons I consider the b e s t; he is the most experienced,
for one thing. He was Governor in Togo before he came to
Cameroons, and also was for some time in Lagos and on the
Niger ; but that is another story, and although a highly diverting
one, we will not go into it here. But for fear there should be
a rush of people out from home to enjoy the charms of the
society of West African Governors, I will remark that they
have their faults. They are awfully bad for your clothes. It