MALARIA EXPEDITION TO NIGERIA 205 
then nearer the top is the Vice-consulate, and on the summit are the Consulate and 
Medical house. Further round are the Force house and barracks of the West 
African Frontier Force, the prison, the European hospital, and a Presbyterian 
mission station. 
On the edge of the creek also on the European side of it are built the native 
hospital and the dwellings of native clerks, court messengers, and orderlies. It is not 
permitted that native houses should be built on this side of the creek, thus procuring 
a distance of about half a mile between the government European quarters and the 
native town. The few native huts which have existed there for a long time before 
the present European quarters were built are being gradually removed. 
The vicinity of these quarters has been excellently laid out, and is kept in 
remarkably good order. Excellent roads, well ditched with cemented gutters, cross 
the hill in all directions ; the quarters are fairly well designed. The total European 
community at Old Calabar numbers about one hundred and twenty. 
Duketown presents a marked contrast to the European half of the town. 
Here the native huts are crowded together, although some efforts have been made 
by the medical and public works officers of the district to construct wide roads and 
to improve the sanitary condition of the town. Narrow winding and irregularly 
made paths run down the hill side between the native huts which, reaching down to 
the beach, are crowded round the factories of the trading companies there. On 
the whole, however, the huts, which are of clay, are fairly clean, although the 
Calabar native is unintelligent, lazy, and but little influenced as yet by civilisation. 
Another mission station is built near the summit of this hill, surrounded by native 
houses. 
Throughout the native town and villages on the river's edge numerous dug- 
out canoes, drawn up to the neighbourhood of the native huts, formed the principal 
breeding-places of Anopheles — and here and there a 'puddle' in the clay at the sides of 
the paths contained larvae. On the edges of the 'creek,' besides innumerable canoes, 
several small puddles in this swampy district were found to contain larvae also. 
A narrow footpath runs along the whole length of the beach behind the 
trading factories, and from one factory to the next. This is badly constructed, and 
permits of the formation of shallow pools during the rains — we observed these several 
times with innumerable Anopheles larvae. The proximity of the native huts to the 
factories, and the presence of many breeding-places of Anopheles in their immediate 
vicinity, explain the prevalence of malarial fever among the Europeans here, who, 
moreover, from the low position of the factories on the water's edge and from the 
general contour of the district, are denied the enjoyment of those refreshing breezes 
which is secured by the Europeans in the more favourable position on the hill. 
Near the quarters of the Government officials on the hill no breeding-places 
of Anopheles could be found during the period of our visit, except a small ' duck ' 
M 
