162 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



Dar-es-Salaam is the capital of German East 

 Africa, and I object to it because it has too much 

 of Germany and too Uttle of East Africa. It 

 is the most strongly built and strongly fortified 

 place on the coast. Modern fortresses are all 

 very well in their proper places, but after 

 slumbering Mozambique, or Oriental Zanzibar, 

 the vision of a miniature Metz offends the 

 eyesight. 



What a contrast to those two quaint, old-world 

 towns of which I have already written ! What 

 a contrast to British Mombasa, where the ghosts 

 of the old adventurers still hover around Vasco 

 da Gama's well, and the grand fort that Seixas 

 de Cabreira rebuilt. One cannot help regarding 

 Dar-es-Salaam as an upstart on this littoral of 

 glorious antiquity. It is as though a Cincinnati 

 lard-emperor had raised up an ugly sky-scraper 

 in the grounds of Woburn Abbey. For it is a 

 seaport without history and a monument to 

 the Fatherland builded on modern foundations. 

 True, it has an aspect of great beauty; true, it 

 is a marvellous testimonial to Teutonic enter- 

 prise. But one does not look for twentieth- 

 century Prussia on a seaboard where every 

 town exudes romance, and each river-mouth 

 washes the silt of African mystery, African 

 fascination and African barbarity out into the 

 ocean. There is no bar of mediaeval mud to be 

 crossed on the entrance to Dar-es-Salaam. It is 

 all new, offensively new. 



When well out at sea a stalwart square sort of 

 lighthouse on a green coast catches the eye. 

 One would never suspect that such a mighty place 

 as Dar-es-Salaam could lie behind. There is 

 nothing in view but verdure and waving palms, 

 and this white house of warning to mariners. 



