FROM ADEN TO MOMBASA. 35 



feed them delicately most of the time to enable them to carry the 

 dusky owners, with their sloe-eyed families, at sunset on the hard 

 highroads. 



The ex-President was taken to the club and treated royally, 

 but not obstreperously. All was decorous and seemly, cjuite lacking 

 in demonstrative enthusiasm which marks our hospitality. He was 

 seated in a deep-bosomed Bombay chair on the shaded veranda, 

 which looks out across a garden of coleas, poinsettias and hibiscus 

 to the rippling blue w^aters of the strait leading to the lesser harbor. 

 Across the water the palm groves of Freretown toss their stately 

 heads in the afternoon breeze. Every one was quietly courteous to 

 the ex-President, but there was no undue hustling to get an intro- 

 duction or to hear what he had to say. 



The stolid Anglo-Saxon exterior does not melt in the tropics 

 nor mellow in the arctic regions. When you get used to it you like it ; 

 perhaps you may even emulate it. But if you be a true American 

 you rejoice exceedingly when you return to the friendly warmth and 

 enthusiasm of your own country people, and your mantle of reserve 

 falls from you at the first touch of American geniality. 



VISIT TO MISSIONARY SETTLEMENT. 



It being Col. Roosevelt's strong characteristic to miss nothing, 

 he accepted the invitation to be taken across the straits to the mis- 

 sionary settlement, Freretown. There he was shown the church 

 built by the converts. These same converts, or their kin, walk about 

 in ill-assorted European garb, the men in trousers and shirts, the 

 women in blouses and skirts. 



If they would only convert their souls and leave their bodies 

 free and clad in the simple draperies which are suited to the time, 

 the place, and the man ! Freretown is a tidy, well-swept settlement, 

 with an air of gentle self-righteousness united to the real enthusiasm 

 which has carried the torch of Christ to the uttermost ends of the 

 earth. 



The ex-President also went to the bazaars or street of shops 

 where Goanese merchants beguiled him with sticks and umbrella 

 handles of yellow rhinoceros horn or deep wrought silver from 



