Return to the River. 
179 
I have said something upon this subject in 
“ Zanzibar City, Island, and Coast” (i. p. 180), it 
will bear repetition. Joseph Dupuis justly re¬ 
marks : “ I am satisfied, from my own experience, 
that many fall victims from the adoption of a 
course of training improperly termed prudential ; 
viz. a sudden change of diet from ship's fare to a 
scanty sustenance of vegetable matter (rejecting 
even a moderate proportion of wine), and seclu¬ 
sion in their apartments from the sun and atmo¬ 
sphere.” 
An immense mass of nonsense, copied in one 
“ authority ” from another, was thrown before the 
public by books upon diet, until the “ Physiology 
of Common Life” (George Henry Lewes) dis¬ 
cussed Liebig’s brilliant error in considering food 
chemically, and not physiologically. The rest 
assume his classification without reserve, and 
work from the axiom that heat-making, carbo¬ 
naceous and non-nitrogenous foods (eg. fat and 
sugars), necessary to support life in the arctic 
and polar regions, must be exchanged for the 
tissue-making, plastic or nitrogenous (vegetables), 
as we approach the equator. They are right 
as far as the southern temperates, their sole field 
of observation; they greatly err in all except the 
hot, dry parts of the tropics. Why, a Hindoo 
will drink at a sitting a tumbler of gli (clarified 
butter), and the European who would train for 
