CHAPTER I 



AEEIVAL IN EAST AFEICA 



Friends' prognostications — Mombasa — the King's African Eifles 

 at Mazems — unsuitable bungalows. 



It was with something like awe that I first beheld 

 the palms and other tropical vegetation growing 

 with such profusion on the banks of the shore, as 

 we entered Kilindini harbour. I had heard so 

 much of dangers and death connected with our 

 African Protectorates, as before coming out from 

 home people take a curious delight in telling one 

 all the horrors they know, or have heard, of that 

 particular spot one is about to visit. 



All the books I had read on that part of Africa 

 we had to live in, that is British East Africa, were 

 on an average twenty years old, and as even one 

 year makes a vast difference to the knowledge 

 gained about the best ways of taking care of one- 

 self, and the civilised methods of living, the circum- 

 stances were not at all the same, nor the danger 

 from illness or death to be compared with what it 

 had been. Others died in making the way clear, 

 but nowadays white people can live as healthily as 



17 2 



