EAST AFRICA 165 



All trade goods for barter with the natives can be bought 

 at Mombasa, the starting-point. It is now of little use to go 

 down to Zanzibar, since porters (for transport) are not allowed 

 to engage themselves for up-country work. Everything can 

 be done at and from Mombasa, where not only can all trade 

 goods be purchased, packed into the regulation 65 Ib. loads, 

 each load numbered, and an invoice taken of it, but all the 

 latest information about the most suitable quality and quantity 

 of goods required for the countries about to be visited can be 

 better obtained at Mombasa than elsewhere. 



To obtain the latest information with regard to the different 

 kinds and qualities of cloth and beads is most important. 

 Fashions change even in East Central Africa, and beads of a 

 certain colour or cloth of a certain quality, which were per- 

 haps in great demand one year, will not even be looked at the 

 following year. Should the wrong kind of goods be taken up 

 by mistake, the natives, although they might be willing to ex- 

 change their products for them, would only do so at such exor- 

 bitant prices that a trip would have to be curtailed, and all 

 sorts of annoyances and disappointments incurred on account 

 of the unlooked-for and ruinous expenditure of goods, unless 

 others of the right kind were sent for from the coast, or could be 

 procured from one of the stations near at hand. 



