158 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



a few hours was made at the low island built of coral on which Mozam- 

 bique stands. The town is picturesque with its square topped houses 

 and walls washed a bright red, yellow and light blue, the native huts 

 of bamboo thatched with palm leaves, and the numerous palm trees 

 growing everywhere. A stay of a day and a half allowed us to see 

 Mombasa, to make purchases in its native bazaars, and to take a journey 

 by train to Mazeros, fourteen miles up into the country. The town 

 is close to the equator and we saw luxuriant tropical vegetation, cocoa- 

 nut and other species of palms, and the huge squat trunks of the 

 baobab — a pleasing contrast after our long experience of the dried- 

 up veld. Leaving there, eleven days of burning sun and hot stifling 

 nights in the Indian Ocean, across the gulf of Aden and up the Eed 

 Sea whose waters one day showed a temperature of 92° Fahrenheit, 

 brought us to Suez. After a week in Egypt necessitated by the block 

 in the Canal, the ship left Port Said for Marseilles where many landed 

 in order to reach England rapidly. The remnant, passing through the 

 Straits of Gibraltar and crossing the Bay of Biscay, disembarked at 

 Southampton on October 24. 



The one sad incident which occurred during the tour was the 

 illness and death of Sir William Wharton, at Cape Town, after our 

 departure from Beira. His work and scientific attainments will find 

 a more fitting record elsewhere. Those who had learned to know him 

 as a fellow-traveler can readily understand and sympathize with the 

 sense of loss experienced by his family and many friends. As I revise 

 these lines comes the news of the death in Cambridge of another mem- 

 ber of the party which will not be less severely felt, Sir Richard Jebb, 

 perhaps the most distinguished scholar of his day and a leading au- 

 thority on educational questions. One rarely talked with him without 

 drawing something interesting from his great store of knowledge and 

 he added much to the success of the meeting and the pleasure of the 

 voyages by his presence amongst us. 



IX. 



It is almost impossible to sum up in a few sentences the wealth of 

 impressions received during the five weeks in South Africa and the 

 subsequent brief visits in East and North Africa. A ' gigantic picnic,' 

 as Professor Darwin characterized the tour in one of his speeches, it 

 truly was ; but it was also a ' scientific picnic ' with wonderful oppor- 

 tunities for profit to those who wished to take advantage of them. 

 The various handbooks, specially prepared for us, on matters connected 

 with the colonies, the arrangements made for seeing everything with- 

 out waste of time and with the minimum of trouble, the way in which 

 all the people put themselves at our disposal whether for showing the 

 country or for telling what they knew — all helped to make the experi- 



