Note 1435 — Chapter XVII · —The Influence Of Climate

The redundant population of crowded western and southern Europe also seek these sparsely inhabited Tropics, but they come heavily handicapped by the necessity of acclimatization. They leave their homes from Trondhjem and Stockholm in the north to the Mediterranean in the south, where the mean annual temperatures vary from 5° to 17° C, (41° to 63° F.), to seek the Torrid Zone which averages 25° C. or 77° F. over most of its territory. The effects of a tropical climate are due to intense heat, to its long duration without the respite conferred by a bracing winter season, and its combination with the high degree of humidity prevailing over most of the Torrid Zone. These are conditions advantageous to plant life, but hardly favorable to human development. They produce certain derangements in the physiological functions of heart, liver, kidneys and organs of reproduction. Bodily temperature rises, while susceptibility to disease and rate of mortality show an increase ominous for white colonization. The general effect is intense enervation; this starts a craving for stimulants and induces habits of alcoholism which are accountable for many bodily ills usually attributed to direct climatic influences. Transfer to the Tropics tends to relax the mental and moral fiber, induces indolence, self-indulgences and various excesses which lower the physical tone.1435 The social control of public opinion in the new environment is weak, while temptation, due to both climatic and social causes, is peculiarly strong. The presence of an inferior, more or less servile native population, relaxes both conscience and physical energy just when both need a tonic. The result is general enervation, deterioration both as economic and political agents.