of doors for six or seven hours during the heat of the day, and I found that I could take as much exercise without fatigue as I could at home. At Para, in 1848, I saw a striking case of how a white man can work in the tropics. A tall, gentlemanly young Scotchman, finding no suitable occupation, and seeing that good milk was scarce in the city, determined to turn milkman. He hired a hut and some sheds about half a mile away, surrounded by second-growth forest and coarse grassy fields, obtained three or four cows, and when I made his acquaintance had got his business in full swing; and his work was certainly rather heavy. He lived absolutely alone; all the fodder for his cows when in milk had to be cut with a scythe and carried to the sheds where they were kept; water had also to be brought to them and the sheds kept clean. Early in the morning the cows were milked, filling two large cans, when he immediately started for the city, carrying them from a yoke across the shoulders in the orthodox manner, and making his rounds to all the houses he served. Returning, he had to get his own breakfast. Then for several hours there was grasscutting and attending to the cows, and getting his own dinner. Yet often in the early evening he was dressed and made calls, often at the very houses he had served with milk in the morning. Notwithstanding this hard work, with the thermometer from 80 to 90 degrees or upward every day, he was the picture of health, and appeared to enjoy his life. It is a well-known fact that in Ceylon and India the men who have the best health are the enthusiastic ) sportsmen who seize every opportunity of getting away from civilization, and who often submit to much privation and fatigue with benefit rather than injury to their health. Our soldiers, again, even in the unhealthy climate of India, most of which is really outside the tropics, have to do a good deal of work, and when marching against an enemy undergo much fatigue, and we do not hear that they are unequal to it on account of the heat. The same is even more clearly the case with our sailors, who do their regular work when stationed in the tropics, 11 and do not suffer injury either from the climate or the work, if not exposed to infectious disease while on shore. The editor of the Ceylon Observer, commenting on my letter on this subject in the Daily Chronicle, adduced case after case of officers, planters, doctors, &c., who had lived from twenty-five up to fifty-eight years ars in Ceylon and have retained almost continuous good health. He also refers to Dutch families descended from settlers who came out from 150 to 200 years ago, and who have maintained average good health even in the hot country of the plains. In the Moluccas there are even more striking examples, many of the Dutch families having been continuously on the islands for 300 years, and they have still the fair complexions and robustness of form characteristic of their kinsfolk in Holland. The Government physician at Amboyna, a German, assured me also that the race is quite as prolific as in Europe, families of ten or a dozen children being not uncommon. The Dutch, however, live sensibly in the tropics, doing all their official work between the hours of 7 and 12 a.m., resting in the afternoon, and going out in the evening. But perhaps the most conclusive example is that of Queensland, the climate of which is completely tropical; yet white men work in every part of it. Whether as gold miners, sheep shearers, sugar workers or railway builders, there has never been any complaint that white men cannot work; while almost all the heavy mechanical work of the country, engineering of every kind, carpentering and all the various building trades, and the scores of varied industries of a civilized community are carried on by white workmen without any difficulty and with no special effect on their general health. In an article on "Industrial Expansion in Queensland" (Westminster Review, March, 1897), Mr. T. M. Donovan tells us that many of the large estates have now been broken up into small farms of about eighty acres each, and sold to white farmers, and he adds: "Where a few years ago there was a large plantation worked by gangs of South Sea Islanders, there are now twenty or thirty comfortable homesteads. And the contention that white European labour could not stand the field work is blown into thin air by the practical experience of thousands of white labourers all along the coast. The black labour question is settling itself; it is only a matter of time until the sugar industry can entirely do away with Kanaka labour." This experiment in Queensland really settles the question. The fact is that white men can live and work anywhere in the tropics, if they are obliged, and unless they are obliged they will not, as a rule, work even in the most temperate regions. Hence, wherever there are inferior races, the white men get these to work for them, and the kinds of work performed by these inferiors become infra dig. for the white man. This is the real reason why the myth, as to white men not being able to work in the tropics, has been spread abroad. It applies in most cases to agricultural work only, because natives can usually be got to do this kind of work, while that of the skilled mechanics has usually to be done by white men. And another reason is that it is only by getting cheap labour in quantity that fortunes can be made in most tropical countries. But when people come to recognize that the fortune-makers, whether by gold mining, speculating or any of the various forms of thinly-veiled slavery, are not ( by any means the happiest, the healthiest or the wisest men, whereas those who really work, under the best conditions, so as to receive the whole produce of their labour, may be both healthy and happy, will usually live longer and enjoy life more, and by working in association may obtain all the necessaries and comforts of existence -then the enormous advantage of living in the best parts of the tropics will become evident. For not only is nature so much more productive that equal amounts of produce may be obtained with half or perhaps a quarter of the labour required in northern lands, but the essentials of a happy and an easy life are so much fewer in number. Houses may be slighter and far less costly; clothing may be reduced to less than half what is required here; fuel is only wanted for cooking; while the enjoyability of the early morning hours is so great that everybody rises before the sun, and thus comparatively little artificial light is required. When all this is fully realized we may hope to see co-operative colonies established in many tropical lands, where families of the same grade of education and refinement may so live as really to enjoy the best that life can give them. Thus only, in my opinion, can the best use be made of the tropics. CHAPTER VI HOW TO CIVILIZE SAVAGES Do our missionaries really produce on savages an effect proportionate to the time, money, and energy expended ? Are the dogmas of our Church adapted to people in every degree of barbarism, and in all stages of mental development? Does the fact of a particular form of religion taking root, and maintaining itself among a people, depend in any way upon race-upon those deep-seated mental and moral peculiarities which distinguish the European or Aryan races from the negro or the Australian savage? Can the savage be mentally, morally, and physically improved, without the inculcation of the tenets of a dogmatic theology? These are a few of the interesting questions that were discussed, however imperfectly, at a meeting of the Anthropological Society in 1865, when the Bishop of Natal read his paper, "On the Efforts of Missionaries among Savages; " and on some of these questions we propose to make a few observations. If the history of mankind teaches us one thing more clearly than another, it is this that all true civilizations and all great religions are alike the slow growth of ages, and both are inextricably connected with the struggles and development of the human mind. They have ever in their infancy been watered with tears and blood-they have had to suffer the rude prunings of wars and persecutions-they have withstood the wintry blasts of anarchy, of despotism, and of neglect they have been able to survive all the vicissitudes of human affairs, and have proved their suitability to their age and country by successfully resisting every attack, and by flourishing under the most unfavourable conditions. |