168 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



The East Coast has changed greatly since its 

 corsair days. Places that were once accounted 

 strongholds have become phlegmatic ports of 

 industry; and words which were unknown in 

 those sanguinary times now take the places 

 of Mombasa and IMozambique, and stand for 

 all that means strength and fortification and 

 defiance. The native name for Mombasa bears 

 the interpretation of " Island of War," and it is 

 probable that no other place on earth has seen 

 so much fighting and sack and rapine as this. Its 

 history is even more drenched in blood than 

 Mozambique or Zanzibar. 



To-day it scarcely gives one the impression 

 of being an East Coast Gibraltar. Seen from 

 the ocean it is a town of bewitching loveliness. 

 The blue sea rolls and tumbles in towards a 

 shore all draped in tender green, and amid the 

 foliage white bungalows peep through a floral 

 galaxy of bougainvillea towards white-crested 

 breakers. On the sea-front the grand old fort, 

 now used as a prison, proclaims that this was 

 once a port that swayed the balance of East 

 Coast power. 



Mombasa is an island separated from the 

 mainland by a narrow channel, and linked up 

 with the Protectorate proper by the Makupa 

 bridge of the Uganda Railway. 



Mombasa is not a port that big ships dare 

 enter. The large liners cast anchor in the 

 beautiful bay of Kilindini, some two or three 

 miles from the old town. Kilindini is the 

 starting-point of the Uganda Railway, the most 

 wonderful line in the world. It has very rightly 

 been termed a railway through the Pleistocene, 

 for it meanders across great open plains, where 

 wild animals are to be observed from the carriage 



