the
equator. One shivered all day long under a thick greatcoat, and the
natives lit fires in front of their huts and huddled round them for
warmth. Chills dangerous to delicate people are apt to be produced by
these changes, and they often turn into feverish attacks, not malarial,
though liable to be confounded with malarial fevers. This risk of
encountering cold weather is a concomitant of that power of the
south-east wind to keep down the great heats, which, on the whole, makes
greatly for the salubrity of the country; so the gain exceeds the loss.
But new comers have to be on their guard, and travellers will do well,
even between the tropic and the equator, to provide themselves with warm
clothing.

Strong as the sun is, its direct rays seem to be much less dangerous
than in India or the eastern United States. Sunstroke is unusual, and
one sees few people wearing, even in the tropical north, those hats of
thick double felt or those sun-helmets which are deemed indispensable in
India. In fact, Europeans go about with the same head-gear which they
use in an English summer. But the relation of sun-stroke to climate is
obscure. Why should it be extremely rare in California, when it is very
common in New York in the same latitude? Why should it be almost unknown
in the Hawaiian Islands, within seventeen degrees of the equator? Its
rarity in South Africa is a great point in favour of the healthfulness
of the country, and also of the ease and pleasantness of life. In India
one has to be always mounting guard against the sun. He is a formidable
and ever-present enemy, and he is the more dangerous the longer you live
in the country. In South Africa it is only because he dries up the soil
so terribly that the traveller wishes to have less of him. The born
Africander seems to love him.

The dryness of the climate makes very strongly for its salubrity. It is
the absence of moisture no less than the elevation above sea-level that
gives to the air its fresh, keen, bracing quality, the quality which
enables one to support the sun-heat, which keeps the physical frame in
vigour, which helps children to grow up active and healthy, which
confines to comparatively few districts that deadliest foe of Europeans,
swamp-fever. Malarial fever in one of its many forms, some of them
intermittent, others remittent, is the scourge of the east coast as well
as of the west coast. To find some means of avoiding it would be to
double the value of