Some of these assertive and incredulous persons have themselves been badly punished for their advertised temerity. The story goes of one lady who, after having published much nonsense on this subject, was bundled off home in an ice pack! I know one man who, after a year or two of good health, gave rein to his opinion in the columns of the _Times_; this good man was no believer in short and effective service, followed by a well-earned period of leave; he advocated long terms of residence as the certain road to immunity; that man spent a single term in Africa, towards the close of which the climate made such inroads upon his constitution, that he was never allowed to return. Those who feel inclined to trifle with and ridicule the dangers attendant upon life in Africa should spend a solid year in some lonely post directing a staff not always amenable to discipline; should live in that comfortless bungalow; should endeavour to tempt the appetite day after day with something from a tin which, no matter what it is called, invariably has the same taste. Then probably a fever intervenes and the lonely resident goes to bed with limbs racked with pain and a head throbbing like the puffing of an express train. By this time the supercilious writer would be brought to know that after all, the climate of West Africa is not that of the Swiss lakes or the Austrian Tyrol. [Sidenote: THE STORY THE GRAVEYARDS TELL] It may be a melancholy undertaking, but all whites going to West Africa should brace themselves to the duty of visiting the cemeteries. What a story the graveyards of West Africa tell! The fair young lives laid down for the comfort of posterity. Men of all walks in life are there—the official and the trader, pitiably aloof in daily life, now lying side by side; they are there from every profession and trade, the engineer and the miner, the planter and the doctor, the young wife and perhaps the new-born infant. Africa—always cruel—has taken them in the very flower of their manhood and womanhood. On the Gold Coast I one day walked into the cemetery and standing in one spot recorded the ages inscribed on twenty-seven of the surrounding tombstones; the oldest amongst the deceased was only forty-six years, and amongst the youngest, two had succumbed at the early age of twenty-two. The average was exactly thirty-two years. Not a few had inscribed upon the tombs such information as, “After two days’ illness.” “After only three weeks in the colony.” “After three days’ illness.” “Died on the way to the coast,” and so forth.