The History Of The English Occupation Of Fernando Po Seems Often
Misunderstood, And Now And Then One Hears Our Government Reviled For
Handing It Over To The Spaniards.
But this was unavoidable, for we
had it as a loan from Spain in 1827 as a naval station
For our
ships, at that time energetically commencing to suppress the slave
trade in the Bights; the idea being that this island would afford a
more healthy and convenient spot for a naval depot than any port on
the coast itself.
More convenient Fernando Po certainly was, but not more healthy, and
ever since 1827 it has been accumulating for itself an evil
reputation for unhealthiness which is only languishing just at
present because there is an interval between its epidemics - fever in
Fernando Po, even more than on the mainland, having periodic
outbursts of a more serious type than the normal intermittent and
remittent of the Coast. Moreover, Fernando Po shares with Senegal
the undoubted yet doubtful honour of having had regular yellow
fever. In 1862 and 1866 this disease was imported by a ship that
had come from Havana. Since then it has not appeared in the
definite South American form, and therefore does not seem to have
obtained the foothold it has in Senegal, where a few years ago all
the money voted for the keeping of the Fete Nationale was in one
district devoted by public consent to the purchase of coffins,
required by an overwhelming outbreak of Yellow Jack.
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