I Have Never Heard This Suggestion Made, But It Struck Me That The Foreign Consuls Resident At Zanzibar Might Suggest This Work To The Sultan, And So Get The Credit Of Having Made It As Healthy A Place To Live In As Any Near The Equator.

But apropos of this, I remember what Capt.

Webb, the American Consul, told me on my first arrival, when I expressed to him my wonder at the apathy and inertness of men born with the indomitable energy which characterises Europeans and Americans, of men imbued with the progressive and stirring instincts of the white people, who yet allow themselves to dwindle into pallid phantoms of their kind, into hypochondriacal invalids, into hopeless believers in the deadliness of the climate, with hardly a trace of that daring and invincible spirit which rules the world.

"Oh," said Capt. Webb, "it is all very well for you to talk about energy and all that kind of thing, but I assure you that a residence of four or five years on this island, among such people as are here, would make you feel that it was a hopeless task to resist the influence of the example by which the most energetic spirits are subdued, and to which they must submit in time, sooner or later. We were all terribly energetic when we first came here, and struggled bravely to make things go on as we were accustomed to have them at home, but we have found that we were knocking our heads against granite walls to no purpose whatever.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 18 of 595
Words from 4965 to 5225 of 163520