1 16 Voyage of the Novara. 



insalubrity of the cMmate than to the unwholesome mode of 

 existence of the natives. Can we feel surprised that naked 

 men, who do not inhabit the more favourably situated spots 

 ventilated by regular winds, but live on the swampy coast, 

 in the sandy bays that are fringed with a forest belt, where 

 they can grow their cocoa-palms with the least labour to 

 themselves, who leave their bodies exposed now to the 

 violence of tropical rains, now to the fiery rays of a tropical 

 sun, and whose food consists almost exclusively of cocoa-nuts 

 and the fruit of the pandanus, — can we wonder that they 

 should be in an especial degree subject to disease ? It is a 

 mistake to suppose that the food of inhabitants of the tropics 

 is that assigned by Nature herself, and therefore the most bene- 

 ficial and suitable. For, despite all theory, which for residents 

 in the tropics chiefly prescribes substances with plenty of 

 carbon and nitrogen as the proper articles of food, we see 

 Europeans, more especially Englishmen, in the hottest cli- 

 mate in the world, with a thermometer that rarely falls below 

 86° Fahr., devouring, just as in a more northern climate, 

 strong soups, gigantic beef-steaks, and mutton cutlets to any 

 extent, contemptuously turning uj) their noses at mere veget- 

 able diet, and barely touching marmalade or sweetmeats ; 

 yet there they are blooming in the best of health, far better 

 even than that of the natives. Indeed, it is a fact full of 

 interest, and confirmed by observations carried on for years, 

 that in the Presidency of Madras, for example, the Hindoos 

 and Mahmudas, so widely different in their customs and mode 



