Their
Damp Mud-Walled Houses Frequently Flooded, They Themselves Spend The
Greater Part Of Their Time Dabbling About In The
Stinking mangrove
swamps, and then, for five months in the year, they are wrapped in
the almost continuous torrential downpour
Of the West African wet
season, followed in the Delta by the so-called "dry" season, with
its thick morning and evening mists, and the air rarely above dew-
point. Then their food is of poor quality and insufficient
quantity, and in districts near the coast noticeably deficient in
meat of any kind. I think the desire for spirits and tobacco, given
these conditions, is quite reasonable, and that when they are taken
in moderation, as they usually are, they are anything but
deleterious. The African himself has not a shadow of a doubt on the
point, and some form of alcohol he will have. When he cannot get
white man's spirit - min makara, as he calls it in Calabar - he takes
black man's spirit min effik. This is palm wine, and although it
has escaped the abuse heaped on rum and gin, it is worse for the
native than either of the others, for he has to drink a disgusting
quantity of it, because from the palm wine he does not get the
stimulating effect quickly as from gin or rum, and the enormous
quantity consumed at one sitting will distribute its effects over a
week. You can always tell whether a native has had a glass too much
rum, or half a gallon or so too much palm wine; the first he soon
recovers from, while the palm wine keeps him a disgusting nuisance
for days, and the constitutional effects of it are worse, for it
produces a definite type of renal disease which, if it does not cut
short the life of the sufferer in a paroxysm, kills him gradually
with dropsy.
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