CLIMATE AND HEALTH. 135 



diseases affecting them are intermittent and remittent fevers 

 and liver affections, and these are generally of the mildest 

 description. The climate is such that a healthy European will 

 undergo as much fatigue and exposure without being affected by 

 it as he would in his own country ; and where ordinary care is 

 taken, a moderately good constitution may resist the effects of 

 climate for a long period of years without experiencing even the 

 smallest degree of sickness. The mortality among them is small, 

 and, apart from special causes, they can show a degree of healthi- 

 ness equalling, if not surpassing, that of their own country. 

 Some years ago, white troops were regularly stationed here, and 

 although the sanitary arrangements for soldiers in those days 

 were very different from what they are now, they enjoyed good 

 health, and perhaps they were never stationed anywhere in any 

 of the colonies, more particularly in the West Indies, where the 

 sickness and mortality among them were so little. In the 

 beginning of 1867, when the troublesome raids of the Indians on 

 our frontier took place, the detachment of white artillery which 

 accompanied the expedition against them underwent, equally 

 with the black troops, the fatigues f long marches through dense 

 bush and virgin forests, with probably less discomfort, and 

 certainly with much less sickness afterwards, than was com- 

 plained of by the black soldiers. 



The diseases which affect the coloured population are similar 

 to some of those affecting the blacks of other colonies in the 

 West Indies, but there is an absence of many of the most serious, 

 as typhus and typhoid fevers, small-pox, scrofula and leprosy. 

 Epidemics are very unfrequent, and are not of that terrible, 

 sweeping nature which characterises epidemics in the West 

 Indies generally. Within the memory of the oldest inhabitant 

 small-pox has only prevailed once, viz., in the year 1856 ; and 

 in the years 1860 and 1869 there were a few sporadic cases of 



