THE CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS. 541 



imploring shipments of ale and beer, because the water was 'wholly 

 unfit to drink.' What held concerning New England was doubtless 

 maintained about every other portion of the Continent settled by the 

 English, and, in some cases, these views prevailed until recent times. 



It is well known that our ancestors thought it would never be 

 possible for white people, or, indeed, for any people, to live on the tree- 

 less prairies of the great West. The earliest settlers always occupied 

 the wooded belts, and only seventy years ago the prairies, which now 

 sustain millions of happy and healthy whites, were looked upon prob- 

 ably in much the same way as we regard the plains of the Amazon, of 

 the Orinoco, or even the Sahara of Africa. 



Many persons yet living can recall the terrible struggles with dis- 

 ease which the first settlers passed through in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 

 Missouri, and even in salubrious California. The early settlers in these 

 States were doubtless as sallow, as cadaverous looking, and with as 

 little prospect of leaving vigorous descendants as the present white in- 

 habitants in Cuba, Porto Eico or the Philippines. The reputations of 

 Florida, Louisiana and Texas were no better. 



Adults can live without deterioration in the Tropics. This has been 

 proven by English and Dutch officers in India, Ceylon, Java, Sumatra 

 and elsewhere. In the West Indies are men from the United States 

 and from all the countries of Europe, who have been in the islands 

 twenty, thirty, forty, and in some cases even fifty, years, who are to-day 

 the picture of good health, active and vigorous in their work. The 

 same is true in all parts of the tropical world. Adults can live in good 

 health there. 



Children born in the Tropics, if educated in temperate latitudes, can 

 return to the Tropics, and this can continue indefinitely in the same 

 families without deterioration. This has been found true in India, 

 Java, the Sandwich Islands and in the West Indies. 



It has been assumed, heretofore, that the bracing climate of the 

 north-lands has produced vigorous constitutions in the children sent 

 from the Tropics. That this was of some value will not be denied, 

 but it is insisted that of greater value is the education in the higher 

 ideals of the temperate latitudes. In the Tropics, ideas of morality, of 

 sanitation, of correct living, are very crude. A child born and reared 

 in the midst of low ideals unconsciously absorbs them, and as- 

 similates readily with the population around him. The Spanish idea 

 that everyone born in a tropical colony is necessarily a 'degenerate' is 

 practically true, if he is also reared among 'degenerates.' The custom 

 which exists in these colonies of giving each child born a 'degenerate' 

 native child as a companion and playfellow, only makes more sure the 

 outcome. Isolated families exist in Cuba and Porto Eico, where, high 

 ideals having been maintained and inculcated in the children, we now 



