N THE SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN.

"We don't want to stay long in this place."

"I don't think we do, sir," was the reply.

"The sooner we leave it, the better."

"That is so," said Harry; "I quite agree with you. I wonder how white
men manage to live here at all."

This conversation occurred at Bonny, a trading station on one of the
mouths of the river Niger in Western Africa. In former times Bonny was a
famous resort for slave traders, and great numbers of slaves were sent
from that place to North and South America. In addition to slave
trading, there was considerable dealing in ivory, palm oils, and other
African products. Trade is not as prosperous at Bonny nowadays as it was
in the slave-dealing times, but there is a fair amount of commerce and
the commissions of the factors and agents are very large. Bonny stands
in a region of swamps, and the climate exhales at all times of the year
pestilential vapors which are not at all suited to the white man. Most
of the white residents live on board old hulks which are moored to the
bank of the river, and they find these hulks less unhealthy than houses
off shore, for the reason that they are less exposed to the vapors of
the ground.

The parties to the conversation just quoted were Dr. Whitney and his
nephews, Ned and Harry; they had just arrived at Bonny, from a visit to
Lake Chad and Timbuctoo, and had made a voyage down the Niger, which has
been described in a volume entitled "In Wild Africa."

One of the residents told Dr. Whitney that all the coast of the Bight of
Benin, into which the Niger empties by its various mouths, was quite as
unhealthy as Bonny. "We don't expect anybody to live more than three or
four years after taking up his residence here," the gentleman remarked,
"and very often one or two years are sufficient to carry him off. The
climate is bad enough, but it isn't the climate that is to blame for all
the mortality, by any means. The great curse of the whole region is the
habit of drinking. Everybody drinks, and drinks like a fish, too. When
you call on anybody, the servants, without waiting for orders, bring a
bottle of brandy, or whiskey, or something of the sort, and place it on
the table between the host and the visitor. You are expected to drink,
and the man who declines to do so is looked upon as a milksop. When one
rises in the morning, his first call is for brandy and soda, and it is
brandy, and whiskey, and champagne, or some other intoxican