One Favourite Haunt Of Mine
Gets Its Drinking Water From A Cemented Hole In The Back Yard Into
Which Drains
A very strong-smelling 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," etc. 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
four 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 Francais, Kacongo,
Congo Belge, 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 they are not; they have "got an
awfully good filter, and they tell the boys," etc., and that they
themselves often put wine or spirit in the water to kill the
microbes. Vanity, vanity! At 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, etc., 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.
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