Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/871

Rh their countrymen already quoted. The English writers of this opinion include Ravenstein, Sir William Moore, and Tilt. Dr. Felkin alone holds to a slightly more favorable view of colonization in Africa, although he qualifies it by requiring an unlimited amount of time; and he finds comfort in the thought that Central Africa is no worse than India. He finally concedes, however, that in this latter colony the hill districts are the only ones where the English can remain in health. For some years the hopes for Africa as a field for colonization were based upon the altitude of the inland plateau. But expert opinion on this seems to show that, with the sole exception of Matabeleland, the country is impossible for European colonists. And even Mr. Stanley declares that cautious pioneering is all that can be expected for the future in the Congo basin—that colonization was never anticipated at all. In the face of such testimony there can be but one conclusion: to urge the emigration of women, children, or of any save those in the most robust health to the tropics may not be to murder in the first degree, but it should be classed, to put it mildly, as incitement to it.

It must not be understood that by this is meant that the white man can not live in the tropics. Hygienic precautions and great care can often render a prolonged sojourn in these regions perfectly harmless. But, as Mr. Wallace observes, the Englishman who can spend a summer in Rome in safety only by sleeping in a tower and by never venturing forth at night, can not be truly said to be acclimated. A colony can never approximate even to the civilization of Europe until it can abolish or assimilate the native servile population; and yet, one of the many things which are expressly forbidden to all colonists in the tropics is agricultural labor. It would be a waste of energy to give citations to prove this, for every work on acclimatization insists upon the necessity of this precaution. Let it be understood, then, that a colonial policy in the tropics means a