WILD LIFE ACROSS THE WORLD 



as you steam into the inner harbour of Kilindini is 

 delightful. You feel instinctively that you are on the 

 verge of adventure. If you have any imagination at 

 all you recall the wonderful boys' serials you used to 

 read years ago, in the old Boys'' Own Paper, about 

 slaves and dhows and pirates generally. The white, 

 sandy beach, the palm trees and the natives stalking 

 along in their spotless linen — nay, there are some of 

 the very dhows there still — bring it all back to you. 

 You are going to realise some of your boyhood's 

 dreams. There is the old Portuguese fort. If Vasco 

 da Gama did not actually plan it, at least he landed 

 here, or somewhere near by. Very little has changed 

 outwardly since the days of Prince Henry the 

 Navigator. ^ There are steamers now and a railway 

 climbing up to the lakes, and there are plenty of Indian 

 merchants and a handful of clean and rather weary 

 Englishmen upholding the national prestige, also a few 

 Americans in quest of the sport they cannot get in their 

 own land ; but, with the exception of these, old 

 Mombasa is practically as it was in the fifteenth 

 century. Probably five centuries hence it will be much 

 the same. It is Africa, to be sure, but none the less 

 it is part of the East. And the East never changes. 



Mombasa is one of the gates to Savage Africa, 

 and still it is not African at all ; it is the East, always 

 the East. You need to remember that fact when you 

 land there. By so doing you will save yourself from 



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