Lord Kimberley is taking vigorous steps to improve the sanitary
condition of the Gold Coast. He seems to have caught the great truth that unhealthiness is not the result, anywhere, of climate alone, but of sanitary conditions exaggerated by climate. As a beginning, he is trying to clean Freetown, where mortality is fearfully high, and where, not to enter into details on a dis- gusting subject, most of the water drunk filters, as we under- stand the reports, through human excreta. He has ordered Freetown to be drained properly, and sent an engineer to do it, and if his orders are obeyed quickly, Freetown will be a sani- tarium for the Coast. It is objected that the engineer ought to have been a doctor, but that is all professional jealousy. An engineer will do quite well if only he is paid a salary, and can be made to believe that his business is to save human life now, and not to rival the Cloaca Maxima.
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