EXPERIENCES IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA. 697 
possibly a new species. However, I managed to bring home 
besides a large collection of birdskins, some 300 butterflies, 
thirty or forty animals’ heads and skins which I shot, together 
with a lot of reptiles, plants, eggs and curios and one or two 
raie live animals and birds which I shall have something to 
say about later. 
After a fortnights busy preparations, I joined my two 
friends, who I was to go with, at Marseilles on December 26th. 
and embarking on the German steamer “ Adolph Wcemann ” 
after an uneventful voyage arrived at Mombassa on the East 
African coast on Wednesday, January 14th, 1908. 
Mombassa is the main port for Eastern Equatorial Africa 
and is a very picturesque looking town built on an old coral 
island, amidst groves of feathery cocoanut-palms and 
banana plantations, and one can well understand how not so 
very long ago, it was one of the big centres of the slave-trade, 
for which its numerous rivers and creeks running inland in 
all directions were very suitable. The population is of the 
most mixed description, European officials, prosperous Indian 
traders, semi-nude natives of various tribes and karki-clad 
English sportsmen all intent on their different occupations ; 
the town itselt is a curious mixture of modern European-like 
buildings and native reed-huts with up-to-date post office, 
station and hotels, while the luxuriant growth of the tropical 
trees and shrubs must be seen to be believed : splendid butter- 
flies and gorgeous birds add to the interest of the scene and 
I felt that I should like to spend a long time in such an 
attractive place, though it was too overpoweringly hot, with 
the curious damp heat of the tropics, to be really pleasant. 
Mombassa also forms one terminus of the Uganda Railway, 
which stretches six hundred miles inland to the shores of the 
Lake Victoria Nyanza, the greatest ol the African Lakes. 
We spent three days at Mombassa which were chiefly occupied 
in getting gun and rifle licences, seeing our big luggage through 
the customs, and settling other formalities which have to be 
erone through, and beyond catching a few butterflies in the 
public gardens. I was able to do no collecting of any sort. 
At length on the 16th of January, we took our places in the 
