572 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 



off the Slave Coast of Africa. It was a popular saying at that time 

 that every British colony on the vilest coast of Africa had three 

 governors, one on his way out on a steamer to assume his post of 

 duty, one still carrying on the government of the colony, and the 

 third on his way home in the handsomely appointed coffin which 

 the government had provided for him. In The Control of the 

 Tropics published in 1898, Benjamin Kidd wrote: "The Tropics 

 * * * can only be governed as a trust for civilization, and with 

 a full sense of the responsibility which such a trust involves. The 

 first principle of success in undertaking such a duty seems to the 

 writer to be a clear recognition of the cardinal fact that in the 

 Tropics the white man lives and works only as a diver lives and works 

 under water. Alike in a moral, in an ethical, and in a political 

 sense, the atmosphere he breathes must be that of another region; 

 that which produced him and to which he belongs. Neither physi- 

 cally, morally, nor politically, can he be acclimatized in the Tropics." 

 Kipling put much the same idea into verse : 



"And the eud of the fight is a tombstone white 



With the name of the late deceased, 

 And the epitaph clear, 'A fool lieth here 



Who tried to hustle the East,' " 



Of India, Meredith Townsend in his book, "Asia and Europe," 

 made the following significant statement : " Not only is there no 

 white race in India ; not only is there no white colony, but there is 

 no white man who proposes to remain. No ruler stays there to help, 

 or criticize, or moderate his successor. No successful white soldier 

 founds a family. No white man who makes a fortune builds a house 

 or buys an estate for his descendants. The very planter, the very 

 engine driver, the very foreman of works departs before he is 60, 

 leaving no child, or house, or trace of himself. No white man takes 

 root in India." 



There is a practically universal conviction on the part of white 

 residents in the Tropics that they need to renew their strength and 

 vigor by going back to their home climates at frequent intervals, 

 unless they wish to wear themselves out, and some day succumb as 

 hopeless wrecks. For white children, especially, a long residence 

 in the Tropics is highly undesirable. One competent authority says : 

 "As a matter of fact there is a constant stream of invalids sent 

 home from all tropical climates, and omitting a few dissenters, 

 there is a generally accepted opinion that two years is the longest 

 period it is safe to remain in hot places without a more or less 

 prolonged vacation in a cold country." A surgeon who had long 

 experience in the Tropics says that the limit of endurance of an 

 equatorial climate, even on an island, and for a stroilg man, is 



