Liberia <•- 



cannibalism. These earlier European adventurers wore the same 

 stufFy clothes in the hot-house climate of West Africa as they 

 did in Northern and Western Europe. They often slept in 

 their clothes on board ship, and seldom or never washed. (The 

 frequent ablutions with native soap and water of the Kruboys 

 and the Gold Coast natives are subjects of amused comment to 

 the, no doubt, smelly Hollanders, Englishmen, or Portuguese 

 who have left us records of their African experiences.) 



These clothes were mostly of wool and linen. Ruffs were 

 worn during the Elizabethan period, and, when on expeditions 

 of a more or less martial character, steel hauberks or breastplates, 

 which must have been well adapted for causing sunstrokes. 

 The Europeans of the fifteenth to the first half of the seventeenth 

 century, however, seem to have suffered less markedly from 

 African fevers than occurred subsequently with their successors. 

 Perhaps this may have been due to their small consumption 

 of distilled spirits or to their being already inoculated with the 

 malarial bacillus in their own aguish countries. 



The clothes worn by the Dutch and English on the African 

 coast during the seventeenth century were simpler and better 

 adapted to the climate than any costume in vogue until the last 

 quarter of the nineteenth century : a broad-brimmed felt hat 

 (usually), linen shirt, close-fitting coat, or jerkin of stout cloth, 

 loose breeches, stockings, and stout, comfortable shoes. Unless 

 sea-boots were worn, however, this left their ankles and calves 

 exposed to mosquito-bites ; but protection against the mosquito 

 was not understood or effected till about five years ago. 



I 



82 



