the seven- or eight-month journey to the populous and disease-ridden lowlands of Africa, India, Sri Lanka, Malaya, and Indonesia. For example, during the seventeenth century alone, approximately 25,000 European soldiers died within the squalid confines of the Royal Hospital at Goa from malaria, dengue, typhoid, and cholera.27 By contrast, European settlers sailed for only five or six weeks and then faced better odds in the less populated and far healthier highlands of Mexico and Peru, and later in North America.
