5
14. There are 2,086 houses, but in the great majority of them there is no
privy attached, as only 406 houses had privies; whilst the occupants of the re
maining 1,680 houses, numbering about 11,340 persons, have to go outside their
domiciles to obey the calls of nature. There are, I believe, only two public latrines
which have been built on the side of the creek; but, as Dr. Hojel truly says, they
are so far from the houses that the people will not go to them, and they are, there-
fore, practically useless, and, besides, they have been erected far above the low-
water line, and if they were much used would prove a nuisance, as the excreta
would be every day exposed for several hours until the tide reached them. The
people consequently defœcate in any sequestered place they can find, too often in
the streets and house gullies, which are not paved, and into which the trap-doors
of the house-privies open, and on to which the urine, ablution water, and house-
sullage is allowed to find its way, where it soaks into the ground or slowly
trickles down into cesspools, which are numerous, and which emit the most
noxious vapours, and are in many instances in very close proximity to surface
wells from which the people draw their drinking-water supply.
15. There is no regular system of sewerage in Tanna. On each side of
the streets are unpaved earth trenches formed on one side by the rubble ma-
sonry plinth of the houses and on the other by that of the roadway. These so-
called drains have not been laid with any proper gradient, so that whatever
sullage finds its way into them will not flow, but remains until pushed along into
one of the two outlet drains, which, instead of being continned down to the edge
of the creek below low-water mark, and in simple earth trenches, in which I saw
sullage festering and bubbling from the escape of sulphuretted hydrogen gas,
where it remains until absorbed or dried up. These outlets are in the close
vicinity of the town.
16. The water-supply of Tanna is on a par with the drainage. The
people are solely dependent on surface wells and a large tank. Dr. Hojel truly
describes the condition of the latter. I saw people washing their clothes, their
persons, cleaning their mouths by taking mouthsful of water and spitting it back
into the tank, whilst others close by were filling mussucks and water-lotas which
they carried off for domestic use. There was a green scum on the water and on
the exposed mud-banks. The wells were nearly all dry, and I was told that
into one near the market, which was also close to a drain, a few lotas full of
water percolated during the night which was eagerly collected by the people
very early in the morning. This well at the time of my visit had no water in
it, though I could see that it had been recently removed. The bottoms of most
of the other wells that I saw were foul, being full of refuse of all kinds.
17. The municipal health establishment consists of 1 overseer of scaven-
gers, 20 scavengers, 2 muccadums, 4 cartmen, and 1 storekeeper, 20 bungies,
and 1 muccadum. There are 4 scavengering carts and 2 nightsoil carts, one of
which is broken.
18. I have not attempted to describe each locality of the town, but in
every place I visited I saw the same disgraceful surface uncleanliness, the same
want of all proper municipal supervision, and the same absence of persistent
sanitary work. The townspeople themselves appear to be aware of this, for on
several occasions respectable houseowner, as soon as they saw Dr. Hojel, came
running up to him and begged of him to look at the nuisances they were suffer-
ing from. One particularly bad one was close to, indeed in the same block of
buildings as the one in which the office of the Municipal Commissioners is
situated, and I was much struck at the indignation expressed by the unhappy
houseowner who pointed out to us a nuisance which ought never under proper
municipal supervision to have been allowed to exist.
19. That the town has suffered from the abominable state of filth it has
been allowed to lie in for so many years, may be gathered from a study of the
mortuary reports, I find, for example, in the Tenth Annual Report of the Sani-
B 221—2a