INTRODUCTION Xxi 
they should have come with far greater reserves of men 
and supplies, or not come at all. 
After days of slow coasting close to the sun-baked 
dunes, where the sparse brushwood, when it did show 
in their hollows, seemed burned black, the somewhat 
shabby greenery of the coast line near Mombassa is a relief 
to the eye. But the cocoanut palms are short and be- 
draggled — and the tangle, that descends to the very surf, 
looks decayed and unhealthy. 
As the big rollers came in before the monsoons, and 
broke in creamy spray on the dark rocks, I seemed to see 
another coast line far away. There little headlands of 
red rock are covered with pines twisted and bent by many 
a winter storm. Between them lie curving sandy bays, 
to whose smooth yellow edges delicious meadows come 
sweeping down, purple and white with clover and mar- 
guerites. Surely Swinburne must have dreamed of a 
Maine or New England shore in springtime when he 
wrote those matchlessly beautiful lines: 
“Where waves of grass break into foam of flowers 
Where the wind’s white feet shine along the sea.” 
Africa’s coast line seems sad and dark to me. 
Mombassa has probably been besieged, stormed, sacked, 
and burnt, oftener in a short time, than any other place 
onthe globe. Look where you will, you see signs of ancient 
warfare. Rusty Portuguese guns thrust their muzzles 
forth from the jungle, and close down to the water, the 
ruins of strongly built batteries still hold their own against 
the destruction of climate and creeper. 
The citadel, finely placed, overlooks the port. 
How did they manage to build such a place, those few 
ill-supported white men of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries? How much one would give to know something 
more about them! They were few. They were far 
