There is a type of African traveller who, hurrying to the coast and back again, returns with all the assurance of a long experienced person to pontifically declare that the unhealthiness of West Africa is all moonshine, that if a man dies it is due to his excesses rather than to the climate. There is, of course, a grain of truth in this assertion; cocktails, midnight oil and habits of a worse type, undermine the constitution in a manner which leave little resistance to the climatic diseases. Yet after all, tropical Africa is a death-trap.

Some of these assertive and incredulous persons have themselves been badly punished for their advertised temerity. The story goes of one lady who, after having published much nonsense on this subject, was bundled off home in an ice pack! I know one man who, after a year or two of good health, gave rein to his opinion in the columns of the Times; this good man was no believer in short and effective service, followed by a well-earned period of leave; he advocated long terms of residence as the certain road to immunity; that man spent a single term in Africa, towards the close of which the climate made such inroads upon his constitution, that he was never allowed to return.

Those who feel inclined to trifle with and ridicule the dangers attendant upon life in Africa should spend a solid year in some lonely post directing a staff not always amenable to discipline; should live in that comfortless bungalow; should endeavour to tempt the appetite day after day with something from a tin which, no matter what it is called, invariably has the same taste. Then probably a fever intervenes and the lonely resident goes to bed with limbs racked with pain and a head throbbing like the puffing of an express train. By this time the supercilious writer would be brought to know that after all, the climate of West Africa is not that of the Swiss lakes or the Austrian Tyrol.

It may be a melancholy undertaking, but all whites going to West Africa should brace themselves to the duty of visiting the cemeteries. What a story the graveyards of West Africa tell! The fair young lives laid down for the comfort of posterity. Men of all walks in life are there—the official and the trader, pitiably aloof in daily life, now lying side by side; they are there from every profession and trade, the engineer and the miner, the planter and the doctor, the young wife and perhaps the new-born infant. Africa—always cruel—has taken them in the very flower of their manhood and womanhood.

On the Gold Coast I one day walked into the cemetery and standing in one spot recorded the ages inscribed on twenty-seven of the surrounding tombstones; the oldest amongst the deceased was only forty-six years, and amongst the youngest, two had succumbed at the early age of twenty-two. The average was exactly thirty-two years. Not a few had inscribed upon the tombs such information as, “After two days’ illness.” “After only three weeks in the colony.” “After three days’ illness.” “Died on the way to the coast,” and so forth.

One interesting feature about this cemetery is that it is enclosed with a stone wall, about four feet high, and all white men may be buried within the compound, as also respectable natives—respectability, so my native guide informed me, being determined by church-going. Natives, therefore, who were not attendants at church, were buried “outside the wall.” Looking over I could see some scores of graves of natives who, not having attended church in life, were divided in death from the church-goers by a foot of stone wall.

Merchants and missionaries would do well to watch more closely the mortality returns of Government publications, for there alone may be seen recorded the effect of furloughs on the health of Europeans. In the slow moving times of twenty years ago, men went to the coast for long periods, and many a missionary and merchant stayed until he died. Government officials, too, were kept at their posts until death carried them off, or they were invalided beyond the possibility of a return. It is instructive to note that mortality is much lower among Government officials, arising beyond question from the fact that they serve short periods, generally of one year only, and then take a furlough in Europe. For many reasons the figures for the years 1901 and 1910 may be regarded as average records. The death-rates among the whites in the two colonies of the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria, showing a remarkable improvement, are as follows:—

Most merchants argue that they cannot afford to bring their men to Europe for short furloughs every year, but one or two good houses are making the experiment with not a little satisfaction to themselves in more than one direction. In the first place a better type of man offers for a short agreement, and then there is the consideration that by preserving the lives of those they have trained, merchants thus avoid the constant re-equipment of new men, the cost of which is very considerable. Nor is the financial aspect the only feature which is proving satisfactory. These merchants find that they reap great commercial advantages over their competitors by being able to hold more frequent consultations with their men. After all, the incidence of cost in connection with passages to and fro is comparatively insignificant on the whole expenditure of the far-reaching commercial enterprises of West Africa.

To preserve the white man’s life in Africa, other elements are equally essential. The dwelling-house, recreation and provisions are features sadly neglected by the majority of whites.

There is so much monotony, so much to irritate and to depress in West Africa, that everything Governments and merchants can do to brighten the lives of their employés should be done. The prettiest and happiest of homes are without doubt in German and Portuguese colonies. In both cases it is due, to a very large extent, to the fact that these nations give every encouragement to the taking out of white women, whose very presence, flitting to and fro in the essentially light garments of the tropics, give more than a touch of poetry to surroundings already anything but prosaic.

The Portuguese love of a garden adds to the attraction of their homes; grape vines are tastefully grown where the Englishman would throw sardine tins; there is a fernery in one corner of the garden, a rose bower in another, luscious fruits and tempting vegetables grow everywhere in exquisite profusion.

The Germans in Cameroons set aside a colonial fund called the “Widows and Orphans Fund,” and I am told it is from this capital account that men draw subsidies with which to take their wives to West Africa!

One of the prettiest incidents I ever saw in West Africa was at Victoria in the German Cameroons. The planter came galloping home from the plantation, and giving a whistle to announce his return, a daintily dressed little matron skipped out lightly to meet him, and arm in arm they walked into a charming little bungalow gay with fern and flower. A few minutes later I passed by the open door and caught a vision of a snowy table cloth, bright with polished silver and glass. I could not help contrasting this with the British factories with their more or less dilapidated dwelling-houses, most of them very dirty, and the general atmosphere in keeping with the slatternly black woman leaning against the cook-house door.

Recreation in some more healthy form than cocktails and billiards is of no less importance than the well-ordered house. In many colonies now there are golf and cricket clubs, but these are only possible in the more civilized towns where there is a considerable congregation of whites. The man who suffers most from fever and despondency is the one stationed at some isolated post of the hinterland. Happy, indeed, is the man with a knowledge of, and love for, a garden; it will keep his mind calm, provide him with healthy exercise, and a supply of fruits and vegetables which will keep him in good form for his daily routine.

Given a good home, sound mental and physical recreation, short periods of service with proportionately shortened furloughs to Europe, the white man’s burden in Africa, to which so many succumb to-day, would be materially lightened, and both white men and women could go forth with a fearlessness which, tempered with care, would largely remove from West Africa the stigma of “the white man’s grave.”