350 A NATURALIST IN MID-AFRICA. 



Company's headmen, who, for the sum of two 

 rupees, will take him to the Transport Office and 

 swear that he knows him well, and that he has 

 been several journeys under his control. (I am 

 speaking of things as they were when I left 

 Mombasa, in 1893.) His name is written down, 

 and he receives three months' pay in advance, with 

 which he goes on the spree, and remains probably 

 drunk till it is finished. His master receives three 

 rupees a month out of his wages during the whole 

 time that he is away. If he does not die of illness 

 and starvation on the road, he will turn up after, 

 say, three years, to obtain his wages, which may 

 not amount to more than 200 rupees (about .€10) 

 for this hard and wearisome work. 



The master will be waiting in the Company's 

 office to grab as much of his wages as he can, but 

 he manages to get a certain amount, and remains 

 drunk till it is over. 



With a few who are free men, the Hindu money- 

 lender replaces the master. 



It will be easily gathered from this that the 

 number of Suahilis is rapidly falling off. The 

 women are simply prostitutes, and rarely produce 

 children, while the work of carrying loads is so 

 hard, that every expedition means the death of 

 some of the porters. Slave raiding is, moreover, 

 nearly a thing of the past. 



Hence the race will be shortly extinct, and 

 African travel on the old lines will be impossible, 



