The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1898-05-06
THE RAINY SEASON IN CUBA.
Said to BE the Most Charming of the
Year-Epidemicsa Due TO NesIi-


Year-Epidemicsa Due to Negli-
gence.
From the st. Louis Globe-Democrat
Washington April 26-Mr. William T.
Hornaday, chief naturalist of the Smith
sonian Institution, has spent nearly ten.
years in East India, Borneo. and sumatra
jungles collecting rare animals. birds, in
sects and serpents for the Smithsonian.
He is the only white man who ever lived
among the head hunters of Borneo.
"An this talk of the danger in Cuba of
the rainy season, yellow fever, etc, is
greatly exaggerated" Mr.. Hornaday said
to-day. Because the Spanish army has
lost so heavily, many uhihfofffied persons
fear that the country would be as fatal
to newly arrived Americans as it was to
green Spaniards. The Spanish troops
saw were wretchedly fed and" clothed, and
absolutely no heed IS taken to enforce
the most obvious sanitary regulations.
Then the food, clothing, medicines, every
thing the men should have to live upon,
is furnished by contractors, VINO stand in
with the officers and simply srarve the
poor soldiers into disease and death. The
Spanish women have a saying: When our
sons go to Cuba or the Philippines they
whose son is coming near the time when
ne must do service in the army is praying
that Cuba and Porto Rico may be lost to
Spain before her son goes away.
After five years of living IN the most
malarial jungles on earth, in the midst
of miasmatic swarnps, drinking swamp
water, and often having to eat Aunaccus-
toned and badly cooked food, never hid
but one touch of jungle fever, and that
only laid me up six or seven days. I owe
my excellent health to TWO or three pre-
cautions. / never slept on the bare
ground nor in the rain, and always I'M
der shelter. l always wore light fiannels
next to the skin, and never slept in damp
clothes. Whatever else / might have to
do without, two changes of flannel under
wear, besides that had on, were always
at hand. Take from six to FIVE grains of
quinine every morning in a cup Of HOT cot
fee, if you have it; If not then in hot wa
ter Have your shoes to fit you, even If
you must buy them yourself, though the
United States is furnishing its troops with
an excellent marching shoe, With these
precautions and a dose Of some light laXa-
tive twice week. there need be no more
fear Of fever in Cuba than there is in Mis-
souri,"
some years an assistant surgeon In the
United States Navy, now in the marine
hospital service, in the tropics, said to-
Gay: 1.-THE rainy season, as it is called
out of Cuba, is to Cubans the most charm
ing season of the year Itnbegins gener-
ally about the middle of May and lasts
to the middle of September. 1t usually
rains in the afternoon. and sometimes the
fan is very heavy and accompanied by
such thunder and lightning as one never
knows outside the tropics. II generally
stops at sunset, which is simply unspeak-
ably grand in its cloud effects / rarely
ever have known 1t to rain at night. II is
this so-calledN rainy season that gives life
and vigor to the growing vegetation and
makes our sugar and tobacco crops what
they are BY eating well-cooked food and
eschewing oyer-lnduigence in the fruits of
the country, usually so tempting to stran-
gers. always sleeping under some sort Of
shelter and not on the bare ground, the
green Yankee from New Hampshire hills
may laugh at the bogy of the rainy sea-
SON and the yellow fever. 1t Is well for
the unacclimated man the first three
months of his stay to take from three TO
six grains of quinine every morning, and
a mild purgative, say. twice week. You
may be as wet as possible If you are IN
the move. but when you stop change your
wet clothes for dry ones, socks and all.
You will never have this fever if you fol-
low these easily remembered rules"