XVill THE LAND OF THE LION 
That reason is: Africa fascinates me as she ever has those 
who visit her. The old Arab proverb proved true at least 
in my case: ‘‘He that hath drunk of Africa’s fountains 
will drink again.” 
The first view of southeastern Africa is unattractive in 
the extreme. As I made my second visit to the coast this 
was again impressed on me. Three years before our 
‘“‘Messagerie’’ steamer had taken a course close in shore 
and day after day one gazed on those mountainous sun 
scorched sand dunes, where no blade of grass grew, that 
seemed to hiss and sizzle in the heat as the blue waves 
washed them. Now and then a faint curl of smoke marked 
where some Somali camel herder or fisherman had pitched 
his black tent, that through the glass might be seen clinging 
like a black snail to the yellow ground. One of the English 
civil servants on board, who had been stationed for some 
time on the Juba River, which divides British East Africa 
from Italian Somaliland, told me that a boat’s party who 
landed on these Somali sandbanks would have their throats 
cut in half an hour. Sincerely he pitied the Italians for 
having such a dangerous and unprofitable colony, and 
thanked God that the Juba marked the British line. 
On the second trip the barren unfriendliness of the Somali 
coast was illustrated afresh. Our German steamer called 
at Naples, and then took aboard sixteen Italian officers. 
The company undertook to land this party at Mogadicio, 
which was somewhat out of the usual course, and thus we 
came to make a call at a little port seldom visited. 
The officers were charming gentlemen, as Italian officers 
usually are. Picked men, too, for their business was no 
sinecure. ‘The Somali under (or supposed to be under) 
Italian rule had, as they love to do, made trouble, and had 
cut up a large party of askaris,* killing some two hundred 
*Native soldier. The askari on Sefari life, is above a porter, and under the head man. He 
carries no load (ordinarily) but is armed, carries your messages, and guards camp at night. 
