West African studies Part 14

From the earliest historical account we have of them to the present day, it has been their habit to suck the trade out of the rich and fertile districts, carry it across the desert, and trade it with the white Moors, who, in their turn, carried it to the Mediterranean and Red Sea ports. The opening of the West Coast seaboard trade, inaugurated by the Portuguese, has acted as a commercial loss to the tawny Moors during the past 400 years, and must be held, in a measure, accountable for the decay of the great towns of Timbuctoo, Jenne, Mele, and so on, though only in a measure, for herein comes the bad point of the inhabitants of the Western Soudan, from our point of view, namely, their devotion to religious differences and politics, which prevents their attending to business. As this state of internecine war came on about the same period as the opening to the black Moors and negroes of a market direct with European traders in the Bight of Benin, it hurried the tawny Moors to commercial decay. Timbuctoo never recovered the blow dealt her by the Moorish conquest in 1591. At the breaking up of the Empire of Askia the Great, revolt and war raged through the region, Jenne revolted in the west, an example followed by the Touaregs Fulah and Malinkase tribes.

Both north and south were thrown into confusion, and Timbuctoo, their intermediary, finding her commerce injured, rebelled in her turn. She was conquered and brutally repressed by the Moorish conquerors in 1594.

A terrible dearth provoked by a lack of rain visited the town, and her inhabitants were reduced to eating the corpses of animals, and even of men. This was followed by the pestilence of 1618,[51] but through this arose any quant.i.ty of wars and upheavals of political authority among the tawny Moors in the early days of European intercourse with the West African Coast. They a.s.sumed a more acute, religious form in our own century, or to be more accurate just at the end of the eighteenth, when Shazkh Utham Danfodio arose among the Fulahs as a religious reformer, and a warrior missionary. He was a great man at both, but as a disturber of traffic still greater, a thing that cannot be urged to so great an extent against the other great Muslam missionary Umaru l'Haji. Still his gathering together an army of 20,000 men in 1854-55, and going about with them on a series of proselytizing expeditions against any tribe in the Upper Niger and Senegal region he found to be in an unconverted state, was little better than a nuisance to the French authorities at that time. Danfodio's affairs have fallen into the hands of England to arrange, and very efficiently her great representative in West Africa, the Royal Niger Company, has arranged them. But for our Danfodio and his consequences, France has had twenty, and she has dealt with them both gallantly and patiently. But there will always be, as far as one can see, trouble for France with her tawny Moors, now that the sources of their support are cut off from them by many of the districts they once drew their trade from--the sea-board districts of the Benin Bight, like Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Lagos, in the English Niger--being in the hands of a nation whose commercial instincts enable it to see the benefits of lower tariffs than France affects. Even were our tariffs to be raised to-morrow, the trade would again begin to drain back into the hands of its old owners, the tawny Moors, for the Western Soudan is being pacified by France. If some way is not devised of providing the tawny Moors with trade sufficient to keep them, things must go badly there, owing to the unfertility of the greater part of their country and the increase of the population arising from the pacification of the Western Soudan, which France is effecting. I will dwell no longer on this sketch of the history of the advance of France in Western Africa.

We in England cannot judge it fairly. Nationally, her honour there is our disgrace; commercially, her presence is our ruin.

Two things only stand out from these generalisations. The Royal Niger Company shows how great England can be when she is incarnate in a great man, for the Royal Niger Company is so far Sir George Taubman-Goldie.

The other thing that stands out unstained by comatose indifference to the worth of West Africa to England is her Commerce as represented by her West Coast traders, who have held on to the Coast since the sixteenth century with a bulldog grip, facing death and danger, fair weather and foul. Fine things both these two things are, but they do not understand each other; they would certainly not understand me regarding their affairs were I to talk from June to January, so I won't attempt to, but speak to the general public, who so far have understood neither Sir George Goldie, nor the West Coast trader, nor for the matter of that their mutual foe France, and I beg to say that France has not been so destructive an enemy to England there as England's own folly has been as incarnate in the parliamentary resolution of 1865; that the achievements of France in exploration in the Western Soudan make one of the grandest pages of all European efforts in Africa; that the influence of France over the natives has been, is, and, I believe, will remain good. "Our intentions are pure and n.o.ble, our cause is just, the future cannot fail us," said Faidherbe. So far as the natives are concerned, this has been the policy of France in Western Africa. So far as diplomatic relations with ourselves, humanly speaking, it has not; but diplomacy is diplomacy, and the amount of probity--justice--in diplomacy is a thing that would not at any period cover a threepenny-bit. It is a form of war that shows no blood, but which has not in it those things which sanctify red war, honour and chivalry. Nevertheless, diplomacy is an essential thing in this world; it does good work, it saves life, it increases prosperity, it advances the cause of religion and knowledge, and therefore the World must not be hard on it for its being--what it is.

Personally, I prefer contemplating other things, and so I turn to Commerce.

Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PAUL DO LOANDA. [_To face page 281._]

FOOTNOTES:

[39] See the first edition of _Henry the Navigator_, by R. H. Major, who, with the enormous wealth of his knowledge, vigorously defends the claim to Portuguese priority; although I do not quite agree with him on the value of the absence of evidence in disproving the French claim I am deeply indebted to him for the mention of references on the point.

[40] This is an interesting case of the alteration that has taken place in Portuguese place names in West Africa. Angra des Ruives in English is Gurnard Bay, and this name was given to it by the Portuguese because of the quant.i.ty of this fish found there. In the _West African Pilot_ you find the place called Garnet Bay, and the _Pilot_ says "fish are abundant"; but as it does not say that garnets abound there, nor that it was discovered by Lord Wolseley, I think there is reason to believe that its name is Gurnard Bay, in translation of Angra des Ruives.

[41] _Prince Henry the Navigator_; Major.

[42] Labat, _Afrique occidentale_, vol. iv. p. 8. 1724.

[43] Equal to nearly 30 English per annum.

[44] _A Relation of the Coasts of Africa called Guinea collected by Sieur Villault, Escuyer, Sieur de Bellfond, in the years 1666-1667._ London: John Starkey, 1670.

[45] Vas Conselo's _Life of King Joo_.

[46] Duke of Devonshire's speech at Liverpool, June, 1897.

[47] Labat. At present the Isle of St. Louis, and what is called the Niger, is the river Sanaga--or Senega and Senegal, as the French corrupt it.--Astley, 1745.

[48] An extent of thirty leagues and six leagues within the land.--Labat, p. 19.

[49] John Law was the eldest son of an Edinburgh goldsmith, born about 1681. "Bred to no business, but possessed of great abilities, and a fertile invention," he, when very young, recommended himself to the King's ministers in Scotland to arrange fiscal matters, then in some confusion from the union of the Kingdoms. His scheme, however, was not adopted. Great at giving other people good advice on money matters, he failed to manage his own. After a gay career in Edinburgh, and gaining himself the t.i.tle of "Beau Law," he got mixed up in a duel, and fled to the Continent. He was banished from Venice and Genoa for draining the youth of those cities of their money, and wandered about Italy, living on gaming and singular bets and wagers. He proposed his scheme to the Duke of Savoy, who saw by this scheme he could soon, by deceiving his subjects in this manner, get the whole of the money of the kingdom into his possession; but as Law could not explain what would happen then, he was repulsed, and proceeded to Paris, where, under the patronage of the Duc d'Orleans, they found favour with Louis XIV. When his crash came he was exiled, and died in Venice in 1729.

[50] _Notice de Senegal_, Paris, 1859, p. 99.

[51] For an interesting account of Timbuctoo and its history, see _Timbuctoo the Mysterious_, by M. Felix Dubois. 1897.

CHAPTER XII

COMMERCE IN WEST AFRICA

Concerning the reasons that deter this writer from entering here on a general history of the English, Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa; to which is added some attempt to survey the present state of affairs there.

Lack of s.p.a.ce, not lack of interest, prevents me from sketching the careers of other nations in West Africa even so poorly as I have that of France; but the truth is, the material for the history of the other nations is so enormous that in order to present it with anything approaching clearness or fairness, folio volumes are required. I have a theory of the proper way to write the history of all European West African enterprises--a theory I shall endeavour to put into practice if I am ever cast ash.o.r.e on an uninhabited island, with a suitable library, a hogshead of ink, a few tons of writing paper, accompanied by pens, and at least a quarter of a century of uninterrupted calm at my disposal.

The theory itself is short, so I can state it here. Pay no attention to the nasty things they say about each other--it's the climate.

The history of the Portuguese occupation of West Africa is the great one. The material for its early geographico-historical side is in our hands, owing to the ability of Mr. Major and his devotion to the memory of Prince Henry the Navigator. But the history of Portugal in West Africa from the days of the Navigator onwards wants writing. Sir A. B.

Ellis fortunately gives us, in his history of the Gold Coast, an account of the part that Portugal played there, but, except for this region, you must hunt it up second-hand in the references made to it by prejudiced rivals, or in scattered Portuguese books and ma.n.u.scripts. While as for the commercial history of Portugal in West Africa, although it has been an unbroken one from the fifteenth century to our own time, it has so far not been written at all. This seems to me all the more deplorable, because it is full of important lessons for those nations who are now attempting to exploit the regions she first brought them into contact with.

It must be noted, for one thing, that Portugal was the first European nation to tackle Africa in what is now by many people considered the legitimate way, namely, by direct governmental control. Other nations left West African affairs in the hands of companies of merchant adventurers and private individuals for centuries. Nevertheless, Portugal is nowadays unpopular among the other nations engaged in exploiting Africa. I shrink from embroiling myself in controversy, but I am bound to say I think she has become unpopular on account of prejudice, coupled with that strange moral phenomenon that makes men desirous of persuading themselves that a person they have treated badly deserves such treatment.

The more powerful European nations have dealt scandalously, from a moral standpoint, with Portugal in Africa. This one could regard calmly, it being in the nature of powerful nations to do this sort of thing, were it not for the airs they give themselves; and to hear them talking nowadays about Portugal's part in African history is enough to make the uninitiated imagine that the sweet innocent things have no past of their own, and never knew the price of black ivory.

"Oh, but that is all forgiven and forgotten, and Portugal is just what she always was at heart," you say. Well, Portugal at heart was never bad, as nations go. Her slaving record is, in the point of humanity to the cargo, the best that any European nation can show who has a slaving West African past at all.

The thing she is taxed with nowadays mainly is that she does not develope her possessions. Developing African possessions is the fashion, so naturally Portugal, who persists on going about in crinoline and poke bonnet style, gets jeered at. This is right in a way, so long as we don't call it the high moral view and add to it libel. I own that my own knowledge of Portuguese possessions forces me to regard those possessions as in an unsatisfactory state from an imperialistic standpoint; a grant made by the home government for improvements, say roads, has a tendency to--well, not appear as a road. Some one--several people possibly--is all the better and happier for that grant; and after all if you do not pay your officials regularly, and they are not Englishmen, you must take the consequences. Even when an honest endeavour is made to tidy things up, a certain malign influence seems to dodge its footsteps in a Portuguese possession. For example, when I was out in '93, Portugal had been severely reminded by other nations that this was the Nineteenth Century. Bom Dios--Bother it, I suppose it is--says Portugal--must do something to smarten up dear Angola. She is over 400 now, and hasn't had any new frocks since the slave trade days; perhaps they are right, and it's time this dear child came out. So Loanda, Angola, was ordered street lamps--stylish things street lamps!--a telephone, and a water supply. Now, say what you please, Loanda is not only the finest, but the only, city in West Africa.

"Lagos! you e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e--you don't know Lagos." I know I have not been ash.o.r.e there; nevertheless I have contemplated that spot from the point of view of Lagos bar for more than thirty solid hours, to say nothing of seeing photographs of its details galore, and I repeat the above statement. Yet for all that, Loanda had no laid-on water supply nor public street lamps until she was well on in her 400th year, which was just before I first met her. During the past she had had her water brought daily in boats from the Bengo River, and for street lighting she relied on the private enterprise of her citizens.[52] The reports given me on these endeavours to develope were as follows. As for the water in its laid-on state, it was held by the more aristocratic citizens to be unduly expensive (500 reis per cubic metre), and they grumbled. The general public, though holding the same opinion, did not confine their attention to grumbling. Stand-pipes had been put up in suitable places and an official told off to each stand-pipe to make a charge for water drawn. Water in West Africa is woman's palaver, and you may say what you please about the down-troddenness of African ladies elsewhere, but I maintain that the West African lady in the matter of getting what she wants is no discredit to the rest of the s.e.x, black, white, or yellow.

In this case the ladies wanted that water, but did not go so far as wanting to pay for it. In the history given to me it was evident to an unprejudiced observer that they first tried kindness to the guardian officials of the stand-pipes, but these men were of the St. Anthony breed, and it was no good. Checked, but not foiled, in their admirable purpose of domestic economy, those dear ladies laid about in their minds for other methods, and finally arranged that one of a party visiting a stand-pipe every morning should devote her time to scratching the official while the rest filled their water pots and hers. This ingenious plan was in working order when I was in Loanda, but since leaving it I do not know what modification it may have undergone, only I am sure that ultimately those ladies will win, for the African lady--at any rate the West coast variety--is irresistible; as Livingstone truly remarked, "they are worse than the men." In the street lamp matter I grieve to say that the story as given to me does not leave my own country blameless.

Portugal ordered for Loanda a set of street lamps from England. She sent out a set of old gas lamp standards. There being no gas in Loanda there was a pause until oil lamps to put on them came out. They ultimately arrived, but the P.W.D. failed to provide a ladder for the lamplighter.

Hence that worthy had to swarm each individual lamp-post, a time-taking performance which normally landed him in the arms of Aurora before Loanda was lit for the night; but however this may be, I must own that Loanda's lights at night are a truly lovely sight, and its P.W.D.'s chimney a credit to the whole West Coast of Africa, to say nothing of its Observatory and the weather reports it so faithfully issues, so faithfully and so scientifically that it makes one deeply regret that Loanda has not got a climate that deserves them, but only one she might write down as dry and have done with it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CLIFFS AT LOANDA. [_To face page 285._]

The present position of the Angola trade is interesting, instructive, and typical. I only venture to speak on it in so far as I can appeal to the statements of Mr. Nightingale, who is an excellent authority, having been long resident in Angola, and heir to the traditions of English enterprise there, so ably represented by the firm of Newton, Carnegie and Co. The trade of Ka Kongo, the dependent province on Angola, I need not mention, because its trade is conditioned by that of its neighbours Congo Francais and the Congo Belge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DONDO ANGOLA. [_To face page 287._]

The interesting point--painfully interesting--is the supplanting of English manufactures, and the way in which the English shipping interest[53] at present suffers from the differential duties favouring the Portuguese line, the Empreza Nacional de Navigaco a Vapor. This line, on which I have had the honour of travelling, and consuming in lieu of other foods enough oil and olives for the rest of my natural life, is an admirable line. It shows a calm acquiescence in the ordinances of Fate, a general courteous gentleness, combined with strong smells and the strain of stringed instruments, not to be found on other West Coast boats. It runs two steamers a month (6th and 23rd) from Lisbon, and they call at Madeira, St. Vincent, Santiago, Principe and San Thome Islands, Kabinda, San Antonio (Kongo), Ambriz, Loanda, Ambrizzette, Novo Redondo, Benguella, Mossamedes and Port Alexander, every alternate steamer calling at Liverpool. The other steamboat lines that visit Loanda are the African and British-African of Liverpool, which run monthly, in connection with the other South-west African ports; and the Woermann line from Hamburg. The French Chargeurs-Reunis started a line of steamers from Havre _via_ Lisbon to Loanda, Madagascar, Delagoa Bay, touching at Capetown, when so disposed, but this line has discontinued calling in on Loanda. The other navigation for Angola is done by the Rio Quanza Company, which runs two steamers up that river as far as Dondo; but this industry, Dondo included, Mr. Nightingale states to be in a parlous state since the extension of the Royal Trans-African Railway Company[54] to Cazengo, "as all the coffee which previously came _via_ Dondo by means of carriers, now comes by rail, the town of Dondo is almost deserted; the house property which a few years ago was valued at 200,000 sterling, to-day would not realise 10,000." I may remark in this connection, however, not to raise the British railway-material makers' feelings unduly, that all this railway's rolling stock and material is Belgian in origin. This seems to be the fate of African railways. I am told it is on account, for one thing, of the way in which the boilers of the English locomotives are set in, namely, too stiffly, whereby they suffer more over rough roads than the more loosely hung together foreign-made locomotives; and, for another, that English-made rolling stock is too heavy for rough roads, and that roads under the conditions in Africa cannot be otherwise than rough, &c. It is not, however, Belgian stuff alone that is competing and ousting our own from the markets of Angola.

American machinery, owing to the personal enterprise of several American engineering firms, is supplying steam-engines and centrifugal pumps for working salt at Cucuaco, and machinery for dealing with sugar-cane. Mr.

Nightingale says the cultivation of the sugar-cane is rapidly extending, for the sole purpose of making rum. The ambition of every small trader, after he has put a few hundreds of milreis together, is to become a fazendeiro (planter) and make rum, for which there is ever a ready sale.

But regarding the machinery, Mr. Nightingale says: "Up to the present time no British firm has sent out a representative to this province.

There is a fair demand for cane-crushing mills, steam engines and turbines. A representative of an American firm is out here for the third time within four years, and has done good business; and there is no reason why the British manufacturers should not do as well. The American machinery is inferior to British makes, and cheaper; but it sells well, which is the princ.i.p.al thing."

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRADING STORES. _To face page 289._]

It is the same story throughout the Angola trade. No English matches come into its market. The Companhia de Mossemedes, which is only nominally Portuguese, and is worked by German capital, has obtained from the Government an enormous tract of country stretching to the Zambesi, with rights to cure fish and explore mines. Cartridges made in Holland, and an iron pier made in Belgium, an extinct trade in soap and a failing one in Manchester goods,[55] and gunpowder, are all sad items in Mr.

Nightingale's lament. Small matters in themselves, you may think, but straws show which way the wind blows, and it blows against England's trade in every part of Africa not under England's flag. It would not, however, be fair to put down to differential tariffs alone our failing trade in Angola, because our successful compet.i.tors in hardware and gunpowder are other nations who have to face the same disadvantages--Germany, Holland, and Belgium. Portugal herself is now competing with the Manchester goods. She does so with well-made stuffs, but she is undoubtedly aided by her tariff. The consular report (1949) says: "The falling off in Manchester cotton since 1891 shows a diminution of 1,665,710 kilos. Cotton, if coming from Manchester via Lisbon, 1,665,710, duties 80 per cent, or 250 reis per kilo, equal 333,144 milreis (about 51,250); cotton coming from Portugal, 1,665,710 kilos, duties 25 reis per kilo, equal to 41,642 dollars, 750 reis (about 6,400), showing a difference in the receipts for one year of 44,850."

There is in this statement, I own, a certain obscurity, which has probably got into it from the editing of the home officials. I do not know if the 1,665,710 kilos, representing the difference between what England shipped to Angola in 1891 and what she shipped in 1896, was supplied in the latter years from Portugal of Portuguese manufacture; but a.s.suming such to have been the case, the position from a tariff point of view would work out as follows: 1,665,710 kilos of cottons from Manchester would pay duty, at 250 reis per kilo, 416,427-1/2 milreis.

Taking the exchange at 3_s._ sterling per milreis, this amounts to 62,464. If this quant.i.ty of Manchester-made cottons had gone to Lisbon, and there become nationalised, and sent forward to Angola in Portuguese steamers, the duty would have been 80 per cent. of 250 reis per kilo, or say 333,142 milreis, equal to 49,971; but if this quant.i.ty were manufactured in Portugal, and shipped by Portuguese steamers, the duty would be 25 reis per kilo, equal to 6,246. The premium in favour of Portuguese production on this quant.i.ty is therefore 56,218, a terrific tax on the Portuguese subjects of Angola, for one year, in one cla.s.s of manufactures only.

The deductions, however, that Mr. Nightingale draws from his figures in regard to Portugal and her province are quite clear. He says, "There is no doubt that the province of Angola is a very rich one. No advantages are held out for merchants to establish here, and thus bring capital into the place, which means more business, the opening up of roads, and the development of industries and agriculture. Generally the colony exists for the benefit of a few manufacturers in Portugal, who reap all the profit." Again, he says, "The merchants are much too highly taxed, a good fourth part of their capital is paid out in duties, with no certainty when it will be realised again. Angola, with plenty of capital, moderate taxes and low duties, might in a few years become a most flourishing colony."

Now here we come to the general problem of the fiscal arrangements suitable for an African colony; and as this is a subject of great importance to England in the administration of her colonies, and errors committed in it are serious errors, as demonstrated by the late war in Sierra Leone,--the most serious even we have had for many years to deal with in West Africa,--I must beg to be allowed to become diffuse, humbly stating that I do not wish to dogmatise on the matter, but merely to attract the attention of busy practical men to the question of the proper system to employ in the administration of tropical possessions.

This seems to me a most important affair to England, now that she has taken up great territories and the responsibilities appertaining to them in that great tropical continent, Africa. There are other parts of the world where the suitability of the system of government to the conditions of the governed country is not so important.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ST. PAUL DO LOANDA. [_To face page 291._]

It seems to me that the deeper down from the surface we can go the greater is our chance of understanding any matter; and I humbly ask you to make a dive and consider what reason European nations have for interfering with Africa at all. There are two distinct cla.s.ses of reasons that justify one race of human beings interfering with another race. These cla.s.ses are pretty nearly inextricably mixed; but if, like Mark Twain's horse and myself, you will lean against a wall and think, I fancy you will see that primarily two cla.s.ses of reasons exist--(_a_), the religious reason, the rescue of souls--a reason that is a duty to the religious man as keen as the rescue of a drowning man is to a brave one; (_b_), pressure reasons. These pressure reasons are divisible into two sub-cla.s.ses--(1) external; (2) internal. Now of external pressure reasons primarily we have none in Africa. The African hive has so far only swarmed on its own continent; it has not sent off swarms to settle down in the middle of Civilisation, and terrify, inconvenience, and sting it in a way that would justify Civilisation not only in destroying the invading swarm, but in hunting up the original hive and smoking it out to prevent a recurrence of the nuisance, as the Roman Empire was bound to try and do with its Barbarians. Such being the case,[56] we can leave this first pressure reason--the war justification--for interfering with the African--on one side, and turn to the other reason,--the internal pressure reasons acting from within on the European nations. These are roughly divisible into three sub-cla.s.ses:--(1) the necessity of supplying restless and ambitious spirits with a field for enterprise during such times as they are not wanted for the defence of their nation in Europe--France's reason for acquiring Africa; (2) population pressure; (3) commercial pressure. The two latter have been the chief reason for the Teutonic nations, England and Germany, overrunning the lands of other men. This Teutonic race is a strong one, with the habit, when in the least encouraged by Peace and Prosperity, of producing more men to the acre than the acre can keep.

Being among themselves a kindly, common-sense race, it seems to them more reasonable to go and get more acres elsewhere than to kill themselves off down to a level which their own acres could support. The essential point about the "elsewhere" is that it should have a climate suited to the family. These migrations to other countries made under the pressure of population usually take place along the line of least resistance, namely, into countries where the resident population is least able to resist the invasion, as in America and Australia; but occasionally, as in the case of Canada and the Cape, they follow the conquest of an European rival who was the pioneer in rescuing the country from savagery.

I am aware that this hardly bears out my statement that the Teutonic races are kindly, but as I have said "among themselves," we will leave it; and to other people, the original inhabitants of the countries they overflow, they are on the whole as kindly as you can expect family men to be. A distinguished Frenchman has stated that the father of a family is capable of anything; and it certainly looks as if he thought no more of stamping out the native than of stamping out any other kind of vermin that the country possessed to the detriment of his wife and children. I do not feel called upon to judge him and condemn, for no doubt the father of a family has his feelings; and as it must have been irritating to an ancestor of modern America to come home from an afternoon's fishing and find merely the remains of his homestead and bits of his family, it was more natural for him to go for the murderers than strive to start an Aborigines' Protection Society. Though why, caring for wife and child so much as he does, the Teuton should have gone and planted them, for example, in places reeking with Red Indians is a mystery to me. I am inclined to accept my French friend's explanation on this point, namely, that it arose from the Teuton being a little thick in the head and incapable of considering other factors beyond climate. But this may be merely thickness in my own head--a hopelessly Teutonic one.

However, the occupation of territory from population pressure in Europe we need not consider here; for it is not this reason that has led Europe to take an active interest in tropical Africa. It is a reason that comes into African affairs only--if really at all--in the extreme north and extreme south of the continent--Algeria and the Cape. The vast regions of Africa from 30 N. to 20 S., have long been known not to possess a climate suitable for colonising in. "Men's blood rapidly putrifies under the tropic zone." "Tropical conditions favour the growth of pathogenic bacteria"--a rose called by another name. Anyhow, not the sort of country attractive to the father of a family to found a home in. Yet, as in spite of this, European nations are possessing themselves of this country with as much ardour as if it were a health resort and a gold mine in one, it is plain they must have another reason, and this reason is in the case of Germany and England primarily commercial pressure.