native town,
371
The plan then to be followed in towns is the formation of a European quarter as distant as possible from native huts, and no better examples of this can be found than the arrangement in India of a European Cantonment and native bazaar.
2. Segregation in out-stations.
The terrible sickness and mortality resulting from the practice of the European living amidst native huts was nowhere more forcibly brought to our notice than in the camps of engineers and other employés engaged on railways under construction. Every settlement and every camp showed the same most deadly practice of allowing numerous native huts to be erected actually in the compound, in which dwelt camp followers and their numerous families (children). To this fact alone is due the excessive sickness from malaria, and as a consequence also black water fever, on railways under construction. The working in swamps, and the turning up of soil are in no way responsible, and a single instance will suffice to show to what railway engineers owe the malaria they so markedly suffer from, for never did we succeed in finding an exception to this deadly arrangement of native huts (with their constant fever supply), and European dwellings close at hand.
The Lokomeji Camp on the Lagos Railway: (see plan ).
PLAN OF LOKOMEJI.
infected Anopheles
Infected
Anopheles!
.
Bellway
Annahetes Lewee
Infected
8880
Anopheles.
Anopheles Cou Larvae.
100
yards
scate
R I F
Large Railway camp
Furopean quarters Native quarters
About half a dozen Europeans lived in this enclosure. In it there were no less than 13 native huts, with, at a guess, 100 inhabitants, men, women, and children.
This is more than enough to explain the constant sickness among Europeans here, but in addition there is a second crowded uative compound, and a third within one. hundred yards. When we consider that every one of these huts is a source of malaria (for actually one half of the Anopheles caught by us contained parasites in the stage ready for transmission to man), it becomes at once evident that a most unfortunate and disastrous mistake has been made by the Europeans living here. In such a case as this the engineer in charge of the section has the power of selecting a site, and has absolute When the power to forbid the building of any huts within any distance he chooses. European fully understands the certain danger to his health in living under such condi- tions, he will absolutely refuse to submit to such unnecessary exposure to danger. With ease, on a railway, a well segregated site for Europeans can always he provided. We shall see that a quarter to half a mile is ample, and some protection is ensured often by only a few hundred yards.
We have given a railway camp as an example of the evil effects of living amidst native huts because here, perhaps, most markedly did we see the result in the fever- stricken, anæmic Europeans subject more than any to blackwater fever. The condition of life is, however, equally typical of all out-stations, the planter, missionary, trader and even Government officials live universally under similar, though usually less dendly, conditions. In many such out-stations the condition could be remedied by very slight changes, the removal of a few hovels: often a single grass hut has been the source of perpetual fever among the Europeans living in a house.
We do not say that no native servant should sleep in a compound (though personally we found no inconvenience in allowing our servants to sleep away) for it is not in the