The commonwealth. (Scotland Neck, N.C.) 1896-1929, 1898-06-02
THE RAINY SEASON.
CUBA'S MOST CHARMING TIME.
Euidemics Due to Negligence.
N. Y. Dispatch.

01s~~essSUW oNS0eSESAA~~s
N. Y. Dispatch.
Mr.. William I. Hornaday, CHIEF
naturalist of the Smithsonian Institute
Washington, has spent nearly ten
years in East India, Borneo, and Sum
atra junsles collecting rare animals,
birds, insects, and serpents for the
Smithsonian. He is the only white
man who ever lived among the head
hunters of Borneo.
Gail this talk of the danger in Cuba
OF the rainy season. yellow fever, etc.,
is greatly exaggerated" Mr.. Hornaday
said recently. because the Spanish
army has lost heavily, many uninform-
ed 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, everything the
men should have to live upon, Is fur
nished by contractors, who stand in
with the officers and simply ssarve the
poor soldiers into disease and DEATH
The Spanish women have saying,
When our sons go to Cuba or the
Philippines they never return Many
| a Spanish mother, whose son is coming
near the time when he 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 swamps, drinking
swamp water, and often having to eat
unaccustomed and badly cooked food,
I never had but one touch of jungle
fever, and that only laid me up six Or
seven days. [ owe my excellent health
to two or three precautions. I never
slept on the bare ground nor in the
| rain, and always under shelter. / al
ways wore hight fannels next to the
skin, and never slept in damp clothes.
| Whatever else I might have to do
without, two changes Of flannel under
wear besides that I had on, were always
at hand. Take from six to five grains
of quinine every morning in cup Of
hot coffee if you have it; if not, then
in hot water. Have your shoes to fit
you, even if you must buy them your
self, though the United States is fur
nishing its troops with an excellent
marching shoe. With these precau-
tlons and dose OF some light laxative
twice week, there need be no more
| fear of fever in Cuba than there is In
Missouri"
MIR. Morrl1las, Cuban born, and for
some years an assistant surgeon in the
United States navy, now in the Marine
Hospital service in the tropics, said ::
"The rainy season, as it is called out of
Cuba, is to Cubans the most charming
season Of the year. 1t begins generally
about the middle of May and lasts to
the middle of September. It usually
rains in the afternoon, and sometimes
the fall is very heavy and accompanied
by such thunder and lighting as one
never knows outside the tropics. It
generally stops at sunset, which is
simply unspeakably grand in its cloud
effects. I rarely ever have known it
to rain at night. It is this so-called
rainy season that gives life and vlgor
to the growing vegetation and makes
our sugar and tobacco crops what they
are By eating well-cooked food and
eschewing oyer-indulgence in the fruits
of the country, usually so tempting to
strangers, 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 season and the yell
low fever. It is we'll for the unaccli-
mated man the first three months of
his stay to take from three to six grains
of quinine every morning and mild
purgatlve, say twice week. You may
be as wet as possible If you are on the
move, but when you stop change your
wet clothes for dry. ones, socks and Vail.
YouEwill never have this fever If you fol-