BY GERMAN STEAMER 3 



of fiscal questions, but I could not help wondering 

 why it should be necessary to travel to a British 

 colony by a foreign steamship line. It is true that 

 the British India Company has a service to 

 Mombasa, but this involves changing ship at Aden, 

 with always the probability of spending a few days 

 in that most disagreeable port, and the possibility 

 of having a part of one's baggage lost or broken 

 in the transhipment. There are three lines of 

 steamships which have direct services between 

 Europe and Mombasa : the Austrian Lloyd from 

 Trieste, the Messageries Maritimes from Marseilles, 

 and the German East African Line from Hamburg. 

 The first of these lines is the best, but the last is 

 the most convenient for passengers from England, 

 as their intermediate boats call at Dover, enabling 

 one to send heavy baggage without transhipment 

 direct to East Africa. 



The Reichs Post Dampfer Markgraf could not, 

 even by stretching truth to the uttermost, be called 

 a good boat. She was uncomfortable and unclean, 

 she rolled abominably in the calmest sea, and stories 

 were even told of her having turned turtle in port. 

 It is to be hoped that she has done so ere this. 

 The voyage through the Mediterranean and the 

 Red Sea to the Indian Ocean is sufficiently familiar 

 to a large proportion of Englishmen ; the first 

 sniff of the East at Port Said, however much 

 polluted by the worst of European civilization, is 

 always a pleasant thing to the inveterate wanderer, 



I — 2 



