292 ATTRACTIONS OF WINTER WEATHER 



from the boughs within reach of their hands ; to 

 dispense with clothing in disregard of decorum ; to 

 swing their hammocks of fibre anywhere out of the 

 sun, and dream away the days and the feverish nights. 

 The life must pall sooner or later on men with whom 

 energy is inborn ; the heat is enervating, and saps 

 the strength, which is the source of health, good 

 spirits and self-satisfaction ; and the lotus-eating 

 immigrants, after a time, might be driven to seek 

 refuge from weariness in suicide. 



British folks have a happy knack of adaptability, 

 and can acquit themselves with credit under most 

 conditions. They made the fortune of our fervid 

 West Indian colonies with their own before the aboli- 

 tion of the slave trade and of the sugar duties. They 

 have conquered an empire in Asia and kept it, in 

 spite of the relaxing atmosphere of the plains of 

 Hindostan, where they must swelter through their 

 duties in baking cantonments or stifling courts of 

 justice, and struggle for a troubled sleep under pun- 

 kahs. They have settled Queenslands, and Georgias, 

 and Guianas, with many a province more or less 

 swampy and sultry ; they live, as they make up their 

 minds occasionally to droop and die among mud-banks, 

 mangroves, and malaria, at the mouths of rivers on the 

 Gold and Grain coasts. They take cheerfully by 

 battalions and batteries to scorching rocks, at such 

 stations as Gibraltar, Malta, and Aden, which might 

 be marked on an ascending atmospheric scale as hot, 

 hotter, hottest. Nevertheless, and naturally, they will 



