ZANZIBAR AND MOMBASA 13 



The traveller may see one wearing a brilliant yellow cloth 

 with a flaring red sun radiating from the centre, or another 

 lady sporting a huge geometrical pattern visible a couple of 

 miles off. 



The Mombasa Club deserves every success ; it has supplied 

 a great want in offering bedroom accommodation to travellers 

 to or from Uganda. For though there are a number of second 

 or third rate hotels, kept chiefly by Greeks, the tendency of all 

 is to degenerate into drinking-saloons for the shady class of 

 men met with in all seaports. Until quite recently the Uganda 

 Government official arriving at Mombasa had to depend on 

 the kindness of a personal friend to put him up for the night. 

 I had a room at the hospital, owing to the courtesy of Dr. 

 Macdonald, the chief medical officer. "A friend in need is 

 a friend indeed," all the world over ; and if it had not been 

 for him, I would have had to pitch nny tent, like a gipsy, on 

 a piece of waste land, when I ?rrived at Mombasa, in the 

 spring of 1895, from Uganda with a patient who had been 

 invalided home. This happened in the days of the ephemeral 

 Imperial British East Africa Company. Now a Sub-Commis- 

 sioner, Mr. Craufurd, is permanently settled here ; and it was 

 owing to his kindly assistance, when last I went up-country, 

 that the Government was saved the expense of any consider- 

 able delay at Mombasa. 



A conspicuous feature of the island is the baobab tree with 

 its aldermanic girth among trees. When it has shed its leaves, 

 it stands bare and gaunt, and looks as if stretching out gouty 

 fingers in apoplectic uncertainty. It has a curious hard-shelled 

 fruit which, when cut through and emptied of contents, 

 furnishes bowls for drawing water, much in the same way that 

 the coco-de-mer supplies dispensing-scoops to some of the Arab 

 retail dealers. 



A very tiny species of dwarf antelope is still occasionally 

 met with on the island ; but this pretty and graceful little 

 creature is dangerously near extermination. Birds and insects 

 are well represented ; but it is obviously difficult to get any- 

 thing new, where every collector starts his collection from, and 

 where he finally ends it. 



A good deal of mission activity prevails in Mombasa, and 

 there are several mission societies. It is a pity that the native 

 convert so often brings disgrace on the religion he professes 



