Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1836 edition. Excerpt: ...disease. The severity of heat, and the low price of ardent spirits, combined to sacrifice life: in the depth of the rainy season, bodies of soldiers have been found choking the drains of the town, into which they had fallen when intoxicated during the previous night. For a minute account of the Settlers' sufferings and their causes, see the Voyages of A. M. Falcon-bridge, who was on the spot. Intemperance may be cited as one of the most general and potent causes of disease; profuse perspiration and a thirst increasing on gratification, easily lead to frequent excesses, even where habits have previously been moderate. Temperance societies did not originate in our colonies under the equator; and legends which tell of the mortality at Sierra Leone in its early days do not narrate many instances of heroic abstemiousness. Rum costs a " cut-money," or thirteen pence, a bottle; " Hodgson's mild ale," the only malt liquor, the same price: with such a choice it is easy to judge to which the lower classes would give preference. The mode of life amongst the first white colonists was a series of experiments. Different climate, and different food, required departure from usual habits. Healthy exercise became fatal fatigue. Morning exposure to the outer air, bracing in England, is prejudicial in Sierra Leone. Champagne, which exhilarates in one temperature, may convey a stream of fever in another. A cooling breeze will refresh here, and there prove fatal. In England, woollen clothing is considered more suitable to winter than summer. In Africa, the person ought to feel it in immediate contact when the air is most sultry. The usual maladies attending colonial infancy were not absent; its constitution strug-VOL. II. I gled with the weakness of childhood;...