MALARIA EXPEDITION TO NIGERIA 
255 
points to the adoption of segregation principles as the only way in which absolute 
protection from the disease can be assured. 
As has already been pointed out several times, it is almost universally the 
rule in West Africa to find European houses built round by native quarters, a 
practice which long experience in India has taught Europeans to carefully avoid. 
The degree of proximity of the native huts varies in different places. For example, at 
Old Calabar, many of the factories are almost surrounded, except in front, by native 
habitations ; similarly at Egwanga, the small native town is built by the side and 
back of one of the factories, the huts abutting on to the boundary walls. Also at the 
Niger Company's factory at Lokoja the native houses are very close up to the 
Company's boundary railings. At other places a small collection of native huts in 
the vicinity of European quarters serves as a continual source of infection — for 
example, at Akassa, the barracks of the native soldiers are close to the government 
vice-consulate, and the small native town near to the quarters of the engineering 
staff. 
It is not essential that the children are of natives of the district, those from 
other parts of the Coast are equally dangerous. Akassa engineers' quarters may be 
again mentioned as an example where the engineering artisans, chiefly natives of 
Lagos, Accra, and Sierra Leone, are housed with their families alongside to the 
European house. A large proportion of these native children were found by us to 
contain malarial parasites. Similarly, also, at Asaba, the proximity of the barracks of 
the Hausa soldiers, who have their wives and children with them, is a dangerous 
menace to the health of the officers at the Force house. 
Examples of the opposite condition of affairs might also be given, for instance, 
at Old Calabar the Government offices and consulate, vice-consulate, and medical 
house, are comparatively free from malarial fever, it having been established that the 
natives shall not build on the European side of the creek separating the two slopes on 
which the native town and European quarters are built. This creek is at a distance 
of about half-a-mile from the houses mentioned. The nearer proximity of the barracks 
of native soldiers to the Force house may possibly account for some cases of fever 
which occur there. 
Further, the factories at Slave Trees, Bakana, and Bugama are at some con- 
siderable distance from any natives, who dwell on the opposite side of the river ; 
the Europeans here enjoy a comparative freedom from fever — although the condition 
of the surface permits of the production of myriads of Anopheles on the spot. 
Native servants living in the neighbourhood of Europeans form a source of 
danger which might in a great measure be prevented. Although they themselves 
cannot be regarded as an at all common source of infection — indeed only a very rare one — 
their presence round the European becomes dangerous in two ways. It is the custom 
to have a number of native servants sleeping in or about the quarters of Europeans. 
