immed and cultivated and
tamed until it looks like an English park. It is a complete
imitation, even to golf links and tennis courts. But the fight that
has been made against the jungle has not stopped with golf links. In
1896 the death rate was ten men out of every hundred. That
corresponds to what in warfare is a decimating fire, upon which an
officer, without danger of reproof, may withdraw his men. But at
Calabar the English doctors did not withdraw, and now the death rate
is as low as three out of every hundred. That Calabar, or any part
of the West Coast, will ever be made entirely healthy is doubtful.
Man can cut down a forest and fill in a swamp, but he can not reach
up, as to a gas jet, and turn off the sun. And at Calabar, even at
night when the sun has turned itself off, the humidity and the heat
leave one sweating, tossing, and gasping for air. In Calabar the
first thing a white man learns is not to take any liberties with the
sun. When he dresses, eats, drinks, and moves about the sun is as
constantly on his mind, as it is on the face of the sun-dial. The
chief ascent to the top of the bluff where the white people live is
up a steep cement walk about eighty yards long. At the foot of this
a white man will be met by four hammock-bearers, and you will see
him get into the hammock and be carried in it the eighty yards.

For even that short distance he is taking no chances. But while he
nurses his vitality and cares for his health he does not use the sun
as an excuse for laziness or for slipshod work. I have never seen a
place in the tropics where, in spite of the handicap of damp, fierce
heat, the officers and civil officials are so keenly and constantly
employed, where the bright work was so bright, and the whitewash so
white.

Out at the barracks of the West African Frontier Force, the
W.A.F.F.'s, the officers, instead of from the shade of the veranda
watching the non-coms. teach a native the manual, were themselves at
work, and each was howling orders at the black recruits and smashing
a gun against his hip and shoulder as smartly as a drill sergeant. I
found the standard maintained at Calabar the more interesting
because the men were almost entirely their own audience. If they
make the place healthy, and attractive-looking, and dress for
dinner, and shy at cocktails, and insist that their tan shoes shall
glow like meershaum pipes, it is not because of the refining
presence of lovely women, but because t