94 Voyage of the Novara. 



soil, been converted from a den of fever and malaria, a spot 

 shunned by all men as a residence, into one of the most 

 healthy localities in the East, so much so indeed that it has 

 been made a resort for invalids ! 



Seduced by the attractive beauty of the harbour of Nang- 

 kauri, the various attempts at founding a settlement have 

 almost without exception been confined to that site. Upon 

 a more close examination however of the precise spot selected 

 for these settlements, it becomes at once apparent that they 

 were for the most part pitched upon the neck of land which 

 divides the land-locked ill-ventilated harbour of Nangkauri 

 from the Bay of Ulkla, surrounded as it is on all sides by 

 thick mangrove swamps. 



On such a site did the settlers erect their huts, and there, 

 often at but a short interval after their arrival, did they find 

 their grave ; and if a very few of their number resisted the 

 deadly influence of the miasmatic vapours, if even they were 

 able for several years to drag along a miserable existence in 

 such a scene, these can only be regarded as striking examples 

 of an unusual vigour of constitution. It is true that most of 

 these missionaries who founded settlements here were by no 

 means properly housed and fed, which in such a climate is a 

 matter of absolute prime necessity for the preservation of 

 health. Often when already attacked with fever they toiled, 

 spade in hand, delving the ground amid the exhausting heat 

 of a tropical day in order to secure the means of subsistence, 

 or gathered shell-fish along the beach, or hunted for reptiles or 



