CARABAO

So far as the water supply of the companies in the interior towns is concerned, we shall be fortunate indeed if we escape an epidemic before the rainy season. The sole dependence and source of drinking water in those places is the rivers running near the towns. In the rainy season these are raging torrents. Now they are hardly more than brooklets - not knee deep, and almost lost in immense river bottoms of the Western type.

Scene of Pollution

I had to cross one of these a few and as far as the eye could the stream was thronged with forms of life. Within a dis- two miles were, at the very of the great unwieldy caraboo and water buffalo, wallowing in the bed of the stream. It is essential to their preservation that they shall spend a considerable part of each day in the water, but a glance at the normal condition of their hides is enough to show the pollution they must engender. Right in among them and at various points along the bank were hundreds of natives, old and young, men, women, and children, all having their daily bath.

This completed, they begin work on the spot with the daily family laundry and such a pounding and wringing occasions all sorts of visions of dirt galore. And this is not a misconception, from a health point of view either.
Lawrence, Mar 26 1900