cemented hole in the back yard into which drains a very strongsmelling
black little swamp, which is surrounded by a ridge
of sandy ground, on which are situated several groups of native
houses, whose inhabitants enhance their fortunes and their
drainage by taking in washing. At Fernando Po the other day
I was assured as usual that the water was perfection, “ beautiful
spring coming down from the mountain,” &c, In the course
of the afternoon affairs took me up the mountain to Basile, for
the first part of the way along the course of the said stream.
The first objects of interest I observed in the drinking-water
supply were foiir natives washing themselves and their clothes ;
the next was the bloated body of a' dead goat reposing in a
pellucid pool. The path then left the course of the stream,
but on arriving in the region of its source I found an interesting
little colony of Spanish families which had been imported
out whole, children and all, by the Government. They had a nice,
neat little cemetery attached, which his excellency the doctor
told me was “ stocked mostly with children, who were always
dying off from worms.” Good, so far, for the drinking water !
and as to what that beautiful stream was soaking up when it
was round corners— I did not see it so I do not know— but I will
be bound it was some abomination or another. But it’s no use
talking, it’s the same all along, Sierra Leone, Grain Coast,
Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Lagos, Rivers, Cameroon, Congo
Français, Kacongo, Congo Beige, and Angola. When you
ask your white friends how they can be so reckless about the
water, which, as they know, is a decoction of the malarious
earth, exposed night and day to the malarious air, they all up
and say theirs is not ; they have “ got an awfully good filter,
and they tell the boys,” &c., and that they themselves often put
wine or spirit in the water to kill the microbes. Vanity,
vanity ! A t each and* every place I know, men have died and
worms have eaten them. The safest way of dealing with
water I know is to boil it hard for ten minutes at least, and
then instantly pour it into a jar with a narrow neck, which plug
up with a wad of fresh cotton-wool— not a cork ; and should
you object to the flat taste of boiled water, plunge into it a bit
of red-hot iron, which will make it more agreeable in taste.
Before boiling the water you can carefully filter it if you like.
A good filter is a very fine thing for clearing drinking water of
hippopotami, crocodiles, water snakes, catfish, &c., and I
daresay it will stop back sixty per cent, of the live or dead
-African natives that may be in it ; but if you think it is going
to stop back the microbe of marsh fever— my good sir, you
are mistaken. And remember that you must give up cold
water, boiled or unboiled, altogether ; for if you take the
boiled or filtered water and put it into one of those watercoolers,
and leave it hanging exposed to night air or day on
the verandah, you might just as well save yourself the trouble
of boiling it at all.
Next in danger to the diseases come the remedies for them.
Let the new-comer remember, in dealing with quinine, calomel,
arsenic, and spirits, that they are not castor sugar nor he a
glass bottle, but let him use them all— the two first fairly
frequently— not waiting for an attack of fever and then ladle-
ing them into himself with a spoon. The third, arsenic— a drug
much thought of by the French, who hold that if you establish
an arsenic cachexia you do not get a malarial one— should not
be taken except under a doctor’s orders. Spirit is undoubtedly
extremely valuable when, from causes beyond your control, you
have got a chill. Remember always your life hangs on
quinine, and that it is most important to keep the system
sensitive to it, which you do not do if you keep on pouring
in heavy doses of it for nothing and you make yourself deaf
into the bargain. I have known people take sixty grains of
quinine in a day for a bilious attack and turn it into a disease
they only got through by the skin of their teeth; but the
prophylactic action of quinine is its great one, as it only
has power over malarial microbes at a certain state of their
development,— the fully matured microbe it does not affect
to any great degree— and therefore by taking it when in a
malarious district, say, in a dose of five grains a day, you
keep down the malaria which you are bound, even with
every care, to get into your system. When you have got
very chilled or over-tired, take an extra five grains with a little
wine or spirit at any time, and when you know, by reason of
aching head and limbs and a sensation of a stream of cold water
down your back and an awful temper, that you are in for a fever,
send for a doctor if you can. If, as generally happens, there
is no doctor near to send for, take a compound calomel and
colocynth pill, fifteen grains of quinine and a grain of opium,
and go to bed wrapped up in the best blanket available.
When safely there take lashings of hot tea or, what is better,
a hot drink made from fresh lime-juice, strong and without
sugar— fresh limes are almost always to be had— if not,
bottled lime-juice does well. Then, in the hot stage, donlt
go fanning about, nor in the perspiring stage, for if you get
a chill then you may turn a mild dose of fever into a fatal
one. If, however, you keep conscientiously rolled in your
blanket until the perspiring stage is well over, and stay in