EUROPEAN WOMEN. 



183 



fear of dysentery. I have mentioned how onr 

 sailors dig their graves. 



So much for the male sex. European 

 women here, as in the Gulf of Guinea, rarely 

 resist the melancholy isolation, the want of 

 society, and the Xostalgia — Heimweh or Home- 

 sickness — so common, yet so little regarded in 

 tropical countries. Under normal circumstances 

 Equatorial Africa is certain death to the Eng- 

 landerin. I am surprised at the combined 

 folly and brutality of civilized husbands who, 

 anxious to be widowers, poison, cut the throats, 

 or smash the skulls of their better-halves. The 

 thing can be as neatly and quietly, safely and 

 respectably, effected by a few months of Afri- 

 can air at Zanzibar or Eernando Po, as by the 

 climate of the Maremma to which the enlight- 

 ened Italian noble condemned his spouse. 



The nosology of Zanzibar is remarkable for 

 the prevalence of urinary and genital diseases; 

 these have been roughly estimated at 75 per 

 cent. Syphilis spreads wide, and where pro- 

 miscuous intercourse is permitted to the slaves it 

 presents formidable symptoms. The ' black 

 lion/ as it is popularly called — in Arabic El Tayr 

 or El Earanj ; in Kisawahili, Bubeh, Kiswendi, 

 or T'hego — will destroy the part affected in three 



