-»i Hostile Forces 



Such being the case, it is incomprehensible to me 

 how people can advocate an immigration of German 

 colonists. Germans are usually hard-working people. 

 And even if they settled in neighbourhoods which were 

 relatively free from fever, they would be obliged constantly 

 to come down into the plains, where the great majority 

 would be certain to become infected by fever-germs, even 

 after a. short stay. 



German women, in my opinion, are especially unfit 

 for East Africa, under any conditions, as things are 

 there at present. Many sad instances confirm me in 

 this view. 



Yet, in spite of everything, I myself would not erase 

 from my life even the worst of those hours lived 

 through in Tropical Africa — not even those worst of all. 

 the hours of sickness ! 



On the contrary, though I have had to struggle 

 against virulent fever, when already on the brink of 

 the grave — more than once, in solitude, well-nigh despair- 

 ing of recovery — it seems to me that by these very 

 sacrifices I have been bound more closely to that land of 

 mystery than by those other hours that I lived through 

 there, when all was indolent delight in its charms. 



Mysteriously, magically, that dark continent attracts us 

 ' — men of the most varied views, dispositions, degrees of 

 culture ! The hours ot vearninL2' and loncrinQf for the return 

 to Africa assail us all ; we want to cut ourselves free from 

 the wearinesses, the multifarious petty claims which our 

 latter-day civilisation imposes on us in daily increasing 

 number ; we want to get back into a state of life more 



665 



