It was difficult in the beginning to accustom myself to cholera conditions. The disease was communicated to very few Americans or other white foreigners, but safety was secured at the price of eternal vigilance. Water could not be drunk unless it was boiled under one’s personal supervision; nothing uncooked could be eaten, not even a piece of imported fruit, unless it had first been washed in a carbolic solution, a process, I may say, which added nothing desirable to its flavour; a good many other precautions were necessary which made us feel as if we were living always in the lowering shadow of some dreadful catastrophe, but, even so, we were surprisingly calm about it⁠—everybody was⁠—and managed to come through the experience without any visible ill-effects.