The most beautiful and the most fruitful portions of the earth are at
the present time in the possession of partially civilized, or barbarous
and savage races, to the exclusion of the more enlightened Caucasian.
Shall he ever remain unable to possess and occupy tropical lands to
the exclusion of dark-skinned and inferior races? Will the time never
come when he can rear a family of strong and vigorous children, of pure
blood, under the equatorial sun? Is it true that the white man removing
to the Tropics necessarily deteriorates?
The almost universal belief is that these questions must be answered in
the affirmative. That, owing to the great heat, and to evil influences
operating through the air, the water and the soil, it will always be
impossible for white people to live in hot countries permanently, and,
at the same time, to retain the physical vigor of temperate latitudes,
and to rear healthy children. But these persons do not take into
account certain recent great discoveries in the domain of science,
medicine and hygiene. In the light of these discoveries, it is not wise
to say that the white man will never conquer the Tropics.
White races have, in the past, reached a high degree of civilization
in hot countries. Egypt, where the first civilization arose, is a
land of tropical heat. The valley of the Euphrates, where arose the
civilization of Babylon, and much of Persia, are both tropical or
sub-tropical in temperature. The people of Egypt, Babylon and Persia
were white. It would seem that to originate a civilization is more
difficult than to maintain it.
Many countries, now most salubrious, were once considered very
unhealthful. Health conditions were so bad in England, after the
withdrawal of the Romans, that for nearly a thousand years there was
absolutely no increase in the population, and the most dismal accounts
of the reign of disease have come down to our times. What was true in
England, was in great part true of all of Europe throughout the Dark
Ages. Scurvy, rheumatism, fevers and plagues held high carnival in
recurring epidemics every few years. If we can believe the reports, it
was fully as dangerous then to dwell in the most favorable portion of
Europe as it is now in the most dreaded tropical regions.
New England was at first thought to be a very unhealthful land. The
early settlers in Massachusetts wrote to their friends in England
imploring shipments of ale and beer, because the water was ‘wholly
unfit to drink’. What held concerning New England was doubtless
maintained about every other portion of the Continent settled by the
English, and, in some cases, these views prevailed until recent times.
It is well known that our ancestors thought it would never be possible
for white people, or, indeed, for any people, to live on the treeless
prairies of the great West. The earliest settlers always occupied
the wooded belts, and only seventy years ago the prairies, which now
sustain millions of happy and healthy whites, were looked upon probably
in much the same way as we regard the plains of the Amazon, of the
Orinoco, or even the Sahara of Africa.
Many persons yet living can recall the terrible struggles with disease
which the first settlers passed through in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Missouri, and even in salubrious California. The early settlers in
these States were doubtless as sallow, as cadaverous looking, and with
as little prospect of leaving vigorous descendants as the present white
inhabitants in Cuba, Porto Rico or the Philippines. The reputations of
Florida, Louisiana and Texas were no better.
Adults can live without deterioration in the Tropics. This has been
proven by English and Dutch officers in India, Ceylon, Java, Sumatra
and elsewhere. In the West Indies are men from the United States and
from all the countries of Europe, who have been in the islands twenty,
thirty, forty, and in some cases even fifty, years, who are to-day the
picture of good health, active and vigorous in their work. The same is
true in all parts of the tropical world. Adults can live in good health
there.
Children born in the Tropics, if educated in temperate latitudes, can
return to the Tropics, and this can continue indefinitely in the same
families without deterioration. This has been found true in India,
Java, the Sandwich Islands and in the West Indies.
It has been assumed, heretofore, that the bracing climate of the
north-lands has produced vigorous constitutions in the children sent
from the Tropics. That this was of some value will not be denied, but
it is insisted that of greater value is the education in the higher
ideals of the temperate latitudes. In the Tropics, ideas of morality,
of sanitation, of correct living, are very crude. A child born and
reared in the midst of low ideals unconsciously absorbs them, and
assimilates readily with the population around him. The Spanish idea
that everyone born in a tropical colony is necessarily a ‘degenerate’
is practically true, if he is also reared among ‘degenerates.’ The
custom which exists in these colonies of giving each child born a
‘degenerate’ native child as a companion and playfellow, only makes
more sure the outcome. Isolated families exist in Cuba and Porto
Rico, where, high ideals having been maintained and inculcated in the
children, we now find vigorous descendants to the third and fourth
generations. There are many such families in Porto Rico, and the same
is true in the Sandwich Islands.
It is here maintained that it is the letting go, little by little, the
correct views of living, which causes the white race to deteriorate,
and not the climate. The necessities of life are fewer and easier to
obtain in hot countries than in cold ones; and this makes it easy for
men to become indolent, to lose ambition and to sink to a low level of
living and thinking.
The Tropics, contrary to the usual view, are healthful regions. Malaria
exists in hot countries, but so it does in temperate ones. Typhoid
fever and contagious diseases are no worse than in cold climes.
Smallpox is regarded as a mild disease. Scarlet fever is said not to
exist at all. Where filth is allowed to accumulate disease prevails,
but in lands well drained and free from decaying matter and filth,
there is, under ordinary care, no more to be feared from disease than
in the most favored portions of the earth. At present, in hot countries
the people pay little attention to sanitation. As a rule, they are
unutterably dirty. They live in their own filth, and seem to enjoy it.
The germs of disease from one body are promptly taken into another
before they have time to die, or are cultivated in filth deposits until
the whole community is affected.
The Tropics, in themselves, are no more and no less healthful than
temperate regions. But the people in cold countries have some respect
for sanitation, while those in hot countries have very little or no
respect for decent cleanliness. This is the whole explanation of this
matter. People who have the latrine in the kitchen and uncleaned for
a century, who sleep in rooms into which a breath of fresh air cannot
enter; who seldom wash their bodies; who use rum and tobacco instead
of food; who permit children to cohabit promiscuously, can scarcely
hope to escape disease, if any prevails in their neighborhood. Such
conditions are the rule with the masses in hot countries.
Those who become ‘acclimatized’ will be able to live in hot countries.
It is doubtful whether or not there is any actual condition known as
‘acclimatization,’ although if the term means becoming accustomed to
filth, and to certain germs which live in filth, there may be something
in the term.
Instead of a bodily change, the individual gradually becomes educated
to his new environment. He learns what to eat and drink, what to wear
and where to sleep, when and how much to work, to come in out of the
shower and to change his wet clothes, to avoid the midday sun and the
damp air of the night. When a man new to the Tropics has learned these
things, he is ‘acclimatized.’ Some learn them at once; others are
years in learning, and meanwhile suffer from sickness and distress.
New conditions must be met in every country new to the pioneer, whether
the country is in temperate or hot latitudes. In opening up a new
country to settlement, it is the severe labors, the exposure, the
meagre diet, the anxiety, the general hard conditions of life, which
undermine the general system and make the body an almost unresisting
victim to the germs of malaria and other diseases. It is not the
climate in new countries, but the hard conditions of life, which kill
the settlers.
So, in the recent war with Spain, bad conditions in the northern camps,
uncleanliness of person due to lack of water, over-exertion in practice
marches, sleeping on the ground, change of food, overcrowding in tents
preventing restful sleep, unsanitary conditions on transports, caused
the men to be landed in the Tropics in an extremely bad condition of
body. Landing in the rainy season, opening the earth to form trenches
for defence and about their tents, sleeping upon the damp ground, with
a deficient and unbalanced ration, with no change of clothes for nearly
three months, it is no wonder that many became sick. But the sickness
was not due to the climate at all. It was due to the hard conditions
in the home camps, and to hard conditions during the campaigns in the
islands.
It is said that the heat, the rains and the insects of the Tropics are
certainly unbearable by a white person from the temperate latitudes.
But these things are magnified by the distance from which they are
viewed. So far as the tropical lands recently acquired by the United
States are concerned, they are not elements to be dreaded.
These lands are all Oceanic Islands. Surrounded by immense areas of
water, they have an unvarying, or slightly varying, temperature. They
are warm the whole year round, while never hot. In all these Islands
the midday temperature is about 80° Fahrenheit. At night it falls to
75° or even to 70°; in the mountains still lower, depending upon the
elevation.
But this heat is moderated by sea breezes. Except for about an hour
in the morning, there is a breeze the whole day long, which tempers
the heat. Sunstroke is unknown. No bad conditions arising from the
heat have been seen in Porto Rico. The nights are always so cool that
refreshing sleep may be obtained, and the effect of the sun is tempered
by clouds, which shade the earth nearly all summer.
All the islands have mountains which may be reached in a few hours,
where the climate of the temperate latitudes may be enjoyed by those
desiring the change.
The tropical rains are no serious drawback. They fall at a fixed time
each day, usually from two to four o’clock in the afternoon. They are
much like heavy June showers in the States, unaccompanied by thunder
and lightning. The ground soon dries off, and the rain has occasioned
no inconvenience of consequence to anyone. The absence of thunder and
lightning is remarkable. This is certainly true in Porto Rico.
The hurricanes and other great wind storms are probably no more
frequent nor more destructive than are cyclones in the States. In Porto
Rico there is a belief that a single severe hurricane occurs about once
in each hundred years.
Insects are strangely few. The mosquito is grown in the cisterns, and
is abundant in the towns. It is practically absent in the country.
The flea is found only in the towns, where it is a sort of domestic
animal. A little attention to cleanliness would diminish the numbers.
The bedbug has not been seen in a year in Porto Rico, though there is
no reason why it should not be here. Centipedes, spiders and tarantulas
are so scarce that the natives expect about fifty centavos for each
large specimen which they catch. Indeed, instead of an abundance of
insects, these islands are remarkable for the small number of species
and individuals indigenous to them.
Recent inventions and discoveries have made the conquest of the Tropics
by the Caucasian race possible. There have been great discoveries made
in chemistry, biology, bacteriology and medicine within recent years.
Chemical discoveries have produced new and powerful remedies. Biology
and bacteriology have brought to light numerous microscopic forms of
life, traced their life histories, and shown that beyond a doubt, many,
if not all, of the diseases designated communicable (contagious and
infectious) are due to living beings called ‘germs.’ The experimental
physician has discovered, in some cases, remedies which will destroy
these germs after they have been introduced into the body, while the
sanitarian has made vast studies in demonstrating how they may be
destroyed before entering the body. Thus, sterilized food, water and
clothing never convey diseases. Cities which are kept clean and have
pure water supplies have little fear of epidemic diseases. The draining
of lowlands, the thorough cultivation of the soil, the paving of
streets and the use of quinine cause malaria to retreat from its old
haunts.
Biologists have shown that a tick conveys the Texas cattle fever; the
tsetse fly in Africa spreads the ‘fly disease’ among the cattle in that
continent. The house-fly spread typhoid fever among our soldiers last
summer, and there is good reason for believing that the mosquito is in
large part the disseminator of malaria. Consumption, dysentery, the
Asiatic plague, leprosy, typhoid fever, are all germ diseases. Knowing
the causes of these diseases, the life history of the germs, and the
remedies to apply, it is hoped that in a very few years the biologist,
the bacteriologist, the sanitarian, all working together, will make
tropical diseases to be no more dreaded than are the diseases of
temperate regions. As warm countries become better known, physicians
will certainly become more skillful to treat the diseases peculiar to
them.
Rapid transportation and rapid communication between the tropic and
temperate regions will rob the former of many terrors. When a person
can communicate with his family every few days, or by telegraph in a
few hours, and when he knows he can reach his old home readily, one
element which disturbed former pioneers is removed.
Rapid transportation and the discovery of the process of canning
fruits, vegetables and meats, together with the process of
manufacturing ice, and of cold storage methods, make it possible for a
person in a hot country to enjoy the foods to which he was accustomed
in his old home. This will be a great help until he has learned to use
native products.
Education and good laws will remove from the Tropics many undesirable
features which now repel people from the North. It has been already
remarked that the people in these islands have no knowledge of
sanitation, and live in utter disregard of all the well-known rules
of hygiene. Some of the most striking examples of this are the living
in their own excretions, sleeping in air-tight compartments, the lack
of a variety of food, working long hours in the hot sun with an empty
stomach, using rum, tobacco and coffee in place of food, the utter
lack of any restraint of the sexual instinct by either men or women of
the lower classes and by the men of all classes, producing a well-nigh
universal corruption of blood.
These unsanitary and unhygienic conditions have dwarfed the tropical
dwellers in body and in mind. These things cannot be laid to the
climate. They are due to ignorance. The same condition would produce
similar results in Pennsylvania or Connecticut, and such results were
seen a generation ago in New Mexico, California and elsewhere.
The laws under which these people have been living have been
monstrously bad. Marriage has in some cases been actually discouraged;
there was little opportunity and little inducement to accumulate
property. There were few schools, and they were of poor quality. The
different races, white, Indian and African, have fully commingled, and
the result the world knows is bad. The strongest arguments against the
mixing of the Caucasian and the African are to be found in the West
India Islands. The mixed races will be much harder to deal with than
pure bloods of any race.
The climate in Cuba and Porto Rico--and the same is claimed for the
Philippines--is equal to any in the States south of the Carolinas. With
the masses educated and with wholesome laws, these islands will all
become garden spots, and will ultimately be occupied by pure-blooded
Anglo-Saxons, the present inhabitants disappearing before the stronger
and purer-blooded race.