Evening Republican, Volume 23, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 February 1920 — Negro Supreme in Liberia, but Must Endure Conditions That Very Few Could Enjoy [ARTICLE]

Negro Supreme in Liberia, but Must Endure Conditions That Very Few Could Enjoy

The negro Is supreme in Liberia. No one of another race can own land or vote in the republic. But after considering the irritations that those who live In Liberia must endure, as Emory Ross outlines them in the Geographical Review, few people would care to ■hare the negro’s privileges. Besides the trying conditions of climate and disease, there Is a host of pests, and little irritations constantly occur. Moths eat up clothing; cockroaches devour bookbindings and nest in the cookhouse; rats climb to impossible locations and leave nothing but the fragments of what they have eaten there- white ants consume the sills of houses and the rungs of chairs; driver ants sweep through the house and force every other living creature therein, from the lord and master down to the lurkink'lizard, to flee even in the dead of night or in the midst of rain; jiggers bore under the skin of the foot and lay their eggs; fleas bite; the heat produces a rash against' which the lightest clothing feels llkenetales; and, to crown all, comes dhobie’s-itch, These things and the proverbial one thousand and one others like them are real and Irritating at any time, but through the blur of a“toucho?sun” or the haze of a burning fever they assume proportions out of all reason. The odors, the mists, the sights, the sounds get on the nerves; the heavy, drooping, silent, impenetrable green forest everywhere shuts one in like a smothering grave; the mind grows sick, and the body follows. No one should stay on the west coast of Africa longer than 18 months at a time.