CHAPTER IX 



THE EAST COAST : A CITADEL AND A 

 BERYL ISLET 



The East Coast of Africa may be termed a 

 seaboard of enlightenment on a continent of 

 darkness. For centuries the great interior of 

 the African continent was a realm of mystery 

 and a land of the unknown. The people of 

 ancient Egypt, the Romans, the Greeks, and the 

 Arabs often speculated on the sources of the Nile, 

 and sang of the grandeur of the Mountains of the 

 Moon, but they only knew of them vaguely. 

 Not so with the coast. The eastern seaboard of 

 Africa was well known before the birth of Christ. 

 All peoples, tongues and nations seem to have 

 visited East Africa at some time or other. The 

 history of the littoral from Cape Guardafui 

 downwards is one of tremendous interest. It is 

 a story of daring exploration in a savage land, of 

 treasure-finding and fearful loss of life, of raid 

 and rapine, conquest and defeat. It has taken 

 far more blood to write than it took England 

 and Spain to record the history of the Spanish 

 Main. What loss of life was entailed in the 

 exploitation of Southern Rhodesia by the 

 Phoenicians or the conquest of the East Coast 

 by the hardy old Portuguese navigators of the 

 sixteenth century; what quantity of gold and of 

 ivory has been won from the interior and trans- 

 ported to the East Coast, or what number of 



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