It may, indeed, be objected that the fevers of Western Africa differ essentially from those traceable to the deltas of rivers, and to the lowlands alternately inundated and exposed to a high temperature, of more temperate climates; but I see no good reason in favour of such an opinion. The tables of sickness and mortality distinctly state that the fevers were intermittents and remittents, but mainly remittents, and that continued or ardent fever was scarcely present; whilst in Canada precisely the reverse is the case, intermittents prevailing to a great extent, remittents being comparatively rare. It would seem, however, that whether or not these fevers spring from a common cause, the temperature of the locality greatly influences the character of the disease. It is impossible to deny the influence humidity has in engendering malarious tendencies, but it is not necessary that the humidity be to any great extent. Water is essential to life, it is essential also to the production of fermentation, of putrefaction; the absolute desert, as I have already remarked, is always healthy; so is the surface of the great ocean, which although it abounds with life, never putrefies, never exhales unpleasant odours. Countries, like some districts of Southern Africa and of Australia, where it seldom rains, are the healthiest countries in the world; there fevers of all types are nearly unknown, and the sufferers from such coming from unhealthy climates, recover speedily from the sad condition to which a residence in a tropical country and frequent attacks of fever may have reduced them. The Royal African Regiment, composed mainly of deserters, left the west coast of Africa for the Cape of Good Hope in 1817; many of them were so reduced in health as to be obviously unfit for service in any country where fevers of an intermittent or remittent character prevailed. Now, a residence on the frontiers of the colony of the Cape not only cured these fevers, but seems also to have been equal to the removal of those sequelæ of fever and dysentery which haunt those who have greatly suffered from them, bringing them in the end to an untimely grave. Nothing of the kind occurred in this remarkable country; all, or nearly all, recovered, and the mortality and sickness of this shattered corps, removed from Sierra Leone and the Gambia to the frontier districts of the Cape of Good Hope, fell considerably below what it is amongst the same class in Britain. These facts merit the attention of all interested in the welfare of the army of Britain, an army exposed more than any other to the effects of climate in all regions of the world.[22] [22] The army of England is, and perhaps has at all times been, an aggressive army, maintained to intimidate foreign races and nations. It resembles in many of its main features the army of ancient Carthage.