INTRODUCTION xxii 



they should have come with far greater reserves of men 

 and supplies, or not come at all. 



After days of slow coasting close to the sun-baked 

 dunes, where the sparse brushwood, when it did show 

 in their hollows, seemed burned black, the somewhat 

 shabby greenery of the coast line near Mombassa is a relief 

 to the eye. But the cocoanut palms are short and be- 

 draggled and the tangle, that descends to the very surf,, 

 looks decayed and unhealthy. 



As the big rollers came in before the monsoons, and 

 broke in creamy spray on the dark rocks, I seemed to see 

 another coast line far away. There little headlands of 

 red rock are covered with pines twisted and bent by many 

 a winter storm. Between them lie curving sandy bays,, 

 to whose smooth yellow edges delicious meadows come 

 sweeping down, purple and white with clover and mar- 

 guerites. Surely Swinburne must have dreamed of a. 

 Maine or New England shore in springtime when he 

 wrote those matchlessly beautiful lines: 



"Where waves of grass break into foam of flowers 

 Where the wind's white feet shine along the sea." 



Africa's coast line seems sad and dark to me. 



Mombassa has probably been besieged, stormed, sacked,, 

 and burnt, oftener in a short time, than any other place 

 on the globe. Look where you will, you see signs of ancient 

 warfare. Rusty Portuguese guns thrust their muzzles 

 forth from the jungle, and close down to the water, the 

 ruins of strongly built batteries still hold their own against 

 the destruction of climate and creeper. 



The citadel, finely placed, overlooks the port. 



How did they manage to build such a place, those few 

 ill-supported white men of the sixteenth and seventeenth 

 centuries ? How much one would give to know something 

 more about them! They were few. They were far 



