He prefers remaining down below and being
comfortable. He is not conceited about this; he admires the higher
culture very much, and the people who inconvenience themselves by
going in for it - but do it himself? NO. And if he is dragged up
into the higher regions of a self-abnegatory religion, six times in
ten he falls back damaged, a morally maimed man, into his old swampy
country fashion valley.
CHAPTER XXII. DISEASE IN WEST AFRICA.
Great as is the delay and difficulty placed in the way of the
development of the immense natural resources of West Africa by the
labour problem, there is another cause of delay to this development
greater and more terrible by far - namely, the deadliness of the
climate. "Nothing hinders a man, Miss Kingsley, half so much as
dying," a friend said to me the other day, after nearly putting his
opinion to a practical test. Other parts of the world have more
sensational outbreaks of death from epidemics of yellow fever and
cholera, but there is no other region in the world that can match
West Africa for the steady kill, kill, kill that its malaria works
on the white men who come under its influence.
Malaria you will hear glibly talked of; but what malaria means and
consists of you will find few men ready to attempt to tell you, and
these few by no means of a tale.
