Page:Scented isles and coral gardens- Torres Straits, German New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, by C.D. Mackellar, 1912.pdf/202

158 picture of health. The Germans seem to have no stamina and to collapse at once. Many here are quite wrecks. They think, however, that Professor Koch did much good.

I am rather prepared to agree with the nurse. All these sorts of countries, primeval lands, have the same coast fevers. It is due to the partial clearing of the tropical jungle, which lets loose the fever microbes born of the accumulation of decaying vegetation, which the sun never reaches till the overgrowth is cleared away. The mosquitoes may carry it, but it exists without these pets. In places where the fever no longer exists, the mosquitoes still flourish and devour. The whole Australian coast once suffered in the same way, and it is yet so in Queensland, but gradually the fever gives way to population and the clearing of the lands. Two brothers of mine, arriving at Rockhampton in Queensland, were down with the fever the same day. Now, it is not nearly so bad there as it used to be, and in places has disappeared, and you hear little about it. Moreover, the people lead such foolish sorts of lives, drinking things most unsuitable to the circumstances. I am a firm believer in tobacco as a preventive, more particularly in the shape of cigarettes, and in this I have every one against me. A pipe, I think, is half poisonous in itself on account of the nicotine, and, after experimenting with pipe, cigar, and cigarette, I truly believe the cigarette to be the least harmful, and, as a preventive of malarial fevers, the best remedy. I felt particularly well amidst all these fever-stricken people.

We then took the “railway” for Erema. After leaving the plantations it passes through a track cut in the natural forest, a dense jungle of gigantic, beautiful, and large-leaved trees, all matted together with creepers, orchids, and palms.