IV.
… SLOWLY the knowledge comes. … For months the vitality of a
strong European (the American constitution bears the test even
better) may resist the debilitating climate: perhaps the
stranger will flatter himself that, like men habituated to heavy
labor in stifling warmth,—those toiling in mines, in founderies
in engine-rooms of ships, at iron-furnaces,—so he too may
become accustomed, without losing his strength to the continuous
draining of the pores, to the exhausting force
of this strange
motionless heat which compels change of clothing many times a
day. But gradually he finds that it is not heat alone which is
debilitating him, but the weight and septic nature of an
atmosphere charged with vapor, with electricity, with unknown
agents not less inimical to human existence than propitious to
vegetal luxuriance. If he has learned those rules of careful
living which served him well in a temperate climate, he will not
be likely to abandon them among his new surroundings; and they
will help him; no doubt,—particularly if he be prudent enough
to avoid the sea-coast at night, and all exposure to dews or
early morning mists, and all severe physical strain.
Nevertheless, he becomes slowly conscious of changes
extraordinary going on within him,—in especial, a continual
sensation of weight in the brain, daily growing, and compelling
frequent repose;—also a curious heightening of nervous
sensibility to atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, to
pleasure and pain. Total loss of appetite soon teaches him to
follow the local custom of eating nothing solid before mid-day,
and enables him to divine how largely the necessity for caloric
enters into the food-consumption of northern races. He becomes
abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have
become oddly exacting—finds that certain fruits and drinks are
indeed, as the creoles assert, appropriate only to particular
physical conditions corresponding with particular hours of the
day. Corossole is only to be eaten in the morning, after black
coffee;—vermouth is good to drink only between the hours of
nine and half-past ten;—rum or other strong liquor only before
meals or after fatigue;—claret or wine only during a repast,
and then very sparingly,—for, strangely enough, wine is found
to be injurious in a country where stronger liquors are
considered among the prime necessaries of existence.
And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose
some physical energy! But this is no mere languor which now begins to
oppress him;—it is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the
misery of convalescence: the least effort provokes a perspiration
profuse enough to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from
muscular overstrain;—the lightest attire feels almost
insupportable;—the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is
torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort.
One wishes one could live as a savage,—naked in the heat. One
burns with a thirst impossible to assuage—feels a desire for
stimulants, a sense of difficulty in breathing, occasional
quickenings of the heart's action so violent as to alarm. Then
comes at last the absolute dread of physical exertion. Some
slight relief might be obtained, no doubt, by resigning oneself
forthwith to adopt the gentle indolent manners of the white
creoles, who do not walk when it is possible to ride, and never
ride if it is equally convenient to drive;—but the northern
nature generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity
without a protracted and painful struggle.
… Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power
of this tropical climate, which remodels the characters of races
within a couple of generations,—changing the shape of the
skeleton,—deepening the cavities of the orbits to protect the
eye from the flood of light,—transforming the blood,—darkening
the skin. Following upon the nervous modifications of the first
few months come modifications and changes of a yet graver kind;—
with the loss of bodily energy ensues a more than corresponding
loss of mental activity and strength. The whole range of thought
diminishes, contracts,—shrinks to that narrowest of circles
which surrounds the physical sell, the inner ring of merely
material sensation: the memory weakens appallingly;—the mind
operates faintly, slowly, incoherently,—almost as in dreams.
Serious reading, vigorous thinking, become impossible. You doze over
the most important project;—you fall fast asleep over the
most fascinating of books.
Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving
with this occult power which numbs the memory and enchants the
will. Against the set resolve to think, to act, to study, there
is a hostile rush of unfamiliar pain to the temples, to the
eyes, to the nerve centres of the brain; and a great weight is
somewhere in the head, always growing heavier: then comes a
drowsiness that overpowers and stupefies, like the effect of a
narcotic. And this obligation to sleep, to sink into coma, will
impose itself just so surely as you venture to attempt any mental
work in leisure hours, after the noon repast, or during the heat
of the afternoon. Yet at night you can scarcely sleep. Repose
is made feverish by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched
with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and
prickling of the whole body-surface. With the approach of
morning the air grows cooler, and slumber comes,—a slumber of
exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and perhaps when you would rise
with the sun you feel such a dizziness, such a numbness, such a
torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you keep your
feet for the first five minutes. You experience a sensation that
recalls the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of
sudden rising from the grave: it is as though all the electricity
of will had ebbed away,—all the vital force evaporated, in the
heat of the night. …
