dings, and seem almost to render our labour
a work of despair.

All our attempts to penetrate into Africa, to establish a friendly
intercourse with the people, and to abolish the traffic in human life
are repelled, and frequently rendered abortive, by the fatal influence
of the climate, and the obstinate resistance of the natives to our
projects of liberty, which they oppose because they derive a lucrative
source of income from the slave-trade, while habit has made them
insensible to its ignominies and miseries. This opposition to our
progress would be of no moment, if the barbarous notions of the people
were not favoured by the repulsive nature of the climate, which is even
more pernicious than we originally believed when we ventured to form a
British settlement within its range. It is so unpropitious to European
life that the pestilential breath of death may be said to lurk in every
calm, and to be wafted in every gale.

It has been supposed, and not without reason, that much of the
insalubrity of the climate may be referred to local causes, and that if
the soil could be completely cleared and drained, the operations of the
air in the redeemed space would expel, or reduce, the baneful influences
that at present produce such extensive mortality. But this would be a
labour demanding almost an incalculable and indefinite period of time,
and which the difficulty of procuring sufficient manual power must
always render nearly impossible, to any great extent.

Hitherto, the situation and prospects of the settlement of Fernando Po
have been discouraging, in consequence of the disease having been more
universal in its ravages than we had anticipated. But it must not,
therefore, be supposed that the place is more unhealthy than other parts
on the coast, or even that the deaths which occurred, during the period
to which I more particularly allude, were occasioned by the insalubrity
of the situation. When the crew of the Eden suffered so much from fever,
it broke out on board of that vessel while she was at Sierra Leone, and
several of the officers and men died before she returned to Fernando Po:
the mortality that ensued was in a great measure caused by the contagion
which the infected sailors spread at the settlement. Several vessels
also arrived before I left the Colony with invalids on board, but the
deaths that took place in their number, certainly ought not to be
introduced into the argument against the insalubrity of the