THE CONQUEST OF THE TROPICS. 545 



diseases to be no more dreaded than are the diseases of temperate re- 

 gions. As warm countries become better known, physicians will cer- 

 tainly become more skillful to treat the diseases peculiar to them. 



Eapid transportation and rapid communication between the tropic 

 and temperate regions will rob the former of many terrors. When a 

 person can communicate with his family every few days, or by telegraph 

 in a few hours, and when he knows he can reach his old home readily, 

 one element which disturbed former pioneers is removed. 



Eapid transportation and the discovery of the process of canning 

 fruits, vegetables and meats, together with the process of manufacturing 

 ice, and of cold storage methods, make it possible for a person in a hot 

 country to enjoy the foods to which he was accustomed in his old home. 

 This will be a great help until he has learned to use native products. 



Education and good laws will remove from the Tropics many unde- 

 sirable features which now repel people from the North. It has been 

 already remarked that the people in these islands have no knowledge 

 of sanitation, and live in utter disregard of all the well-known rules of 

 hygiene. Some of the most striking examples of this are the living in 

 their own excretions, sleeping in air-tight compartments, the lack of a 

 variety of food, working long hours in the hot sun with an empty stom- 

 ach, using rum, tobacco and coffee in place of food, the utter lack of any 

 restraint of the sexual instinct by either men or women of the lower 

 classes and by the men of all classes, producing a well-nigh universal 

 corruption of blood. 



These unsanitary and unhygienic conditions have dwarfed the 

 tropical dwellers in body and in mind. These things cannot be laid to 

 the climate. They are due to ignorance. The same condition would 

 produce similar results in Pennsylvania or Connecticut, and such results 

 were seen a generation ago in New Mexico, California and elsewhere. 



The laws under which these people have been living have been 

 monstrously bad. Marriage has in some cases been actually discour- 

 aged; there was little opportunity and little inducement to accumulate 

 property. There were few schools, and they were of poor quality. The 

 different races, white, Indian and African, have fully commingled, and 

 the result the world knows is bad. The strongest arguments against 

 the mixing of the Caucasian and the African are to be found in the 

 West India Islands. The mixed races will be much harder to deal with 

 than pure bloods of any race. 



The climate in Cuba and Porto Eico — and the same is claimed for 

 the Philippines — is equal to any in the States south of the Carolinas. 

 With the masses educated and with wholesome laws, these islands will 

 all become garden spots, and will ultimately be occupied by pure- 

 blooded Anglo-Saxons, the present inhabitants disappearing before the 

 stronger and purer-blooded race. 



VOL. LVII.— 35 



