142 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES. 
the late Surgeon-General Gorgas to secure for the 10,000 men, women and 
children in the canal construction camps, in spite of the high humid heat, | 
as good health as they would have had in the United States. Gorgas 
claimed that the results at Panama ‘ will be generally received as a demon- 
stration that the white man can live and thrive in the tropics.’ Gorgas 
realized that the results for the future are even more momentous. He 
predicted that as ‘the amount of wealth which can be produced in the 
tropics for a given amount of labour is so much larger than that which can 
be produced in the temperate zone by the same amount of labour, that the 
attraction for the white man to emigrate to the tropics will be very great 
when it is appreciated that he can be made safe as to his health conditions 
atsmallexpense. When the great valleys of the Amazon and of the Congo © 
are occupied by a white population more food will be produced in these 
regions than is now produced in all the rest of the inhabited world.’ ; 
4.—OLD-ESTABLISHED EUROPEAN SETTLEMENTS IN THE TROPICS. 
Similar improvements are in progress elsewhere and explain why some 
white colonies have existed for long periods in the tropics without physical 
deterioration. 
Two distinguished authorities on Equatorial South America—A. Russel 
Wallace and Richard Spruce—agree that under the Equator in Ecuador 
and northern Peru there are many Spaniards whose ancestors have lived 
there for centuries. Spruce says that some of the Spanish families at 
Guayaquil (lat. 2°13’S.) are pure in race, and have maintained their physical 
fitness after centuries of residence under the Equator. In the West Indies 
there are various old-established European colonies. The island of Saba 
(17°38’N.) was occupied by the Dutch in 1644. The descendants of the 
original settlers still occupy it and, apart from some effects of in-breeding, 
are reported to be healthy and vigorous and incontestably pure in race. 
Some of the German colonies in Brazil are within the tropics, and though 
established as early as 1847 the settlers are in good physical condition ; 
at Santa Katharina, ina low-lying part of the coast just south of the tropics, 
the 85,000 Germans are reported to have better health than the natives. 
The European settlement in the tropics in the small island of Kissa, off 
Timor, is especially remarkable for its long survival, despite its small 
numbers and unfavourable circumstances. Eight Dutch soldiers and 
their wives were landed on Kissa in 1665 to hold it against the Portuguese. 
They were forgotten, but they established themselves, and their descendants 
now number over 300. The Admiralty Pilot describes the island as 
unhealthy and feverish. Nevertheless, the Dutch colony is said to be 
healthy, and many of its members have fair hair, blue eyes and blonde 
complexions. They retain the names of the original settlers, but they 
have lost their Dutch language and religion, and have adopted many 
native ways of life. A Dutch missionary, Rinnooij, has referred to the 
settlers as mestizos, 7.e. half-castes, and states that the soldiers took 
wives from the daughters of the land. His statements are quite incon- 
sistent with the later and more detailed account by Professor Macmillan 
Brown. If the women of the colony had always been natives of Kissa, 
the survival of the light hair, eye, and skin appears inexplicable. Hence, 
though Macmillan Brown may have underrated the Malay infusion, it 
