MORTALITY. 



177 



Pangani river during the month of August : of 

 his 19 men, three died, and all but one suffered 

 severely. Perhaps we should not find a similar 

 mortality in the present day, when the lancet has 

 been laid aside for the preventive treatment by 

 quinine and tonics. It has, however, been as- 

 serted that the prophylactic use of the alkaloid, 

 which was such a success in western Africa, did 

 not prove equally valuable on the eastern coast. 



Yet Zanzibar, with its double seasons and its 

 uniformly heated and humid atmosphere, accords 

 ill, even where healthiest, with the irritable tem- 

 perament of northern races. Here, contrary to 

 the rule of Madagascar, the lowlands over which 

 the fresh sea-breeze plays are the only parts 

 where the white stranger can land and live ; the 

 interior is non habitabilis sestu. Lieut. -Colonel 

 Hamerton, called upon in March, 1844, by Sir 

 George Arthur, governor of Bombay, to report 

 upon the island, wrote in September of the same 

 year, ' The climate of the [insular] coast is not 

 unhealthy for Europeans, but it is impossible for 

 white men to live in the interior of the island, 

 the vegetation being rank and appearing always 

 to be going on ; and generally fever contracted 

 in the interior is fatal to Europeans/ Colonel 

 Sykes (loco cit.) questions this assertion as being 



VOL. L 12 



