Chapter II. 
evening of the 16th the whole party set out from Naples on 
board the German liner Biirgermeister hound for East Africa, 
THE “WINIFRED” ALONGSIDE THE PIER IN PORT FLORENCE. 
The distance from Naples to Mombasa, situated on the East 
Coast a little over four degrees south of the Equator, is about 
4,100 miles. The steamers usually take seventeen days on the 
voyage, with brief stops at Port Said, Suez, Aden, and Jibuti. 
Africa as seen from the lied Sea is far from attractive. The 
coast is low and sandy, flat or bounded by dunes. The hills are 
barren and naked, the country baked by the sun, desolate and 
sterile. The ports upon the high road of the great trade lines, 
present a profoundly depressing spectacle. Arabs, Turks, and 
negroes in rags and squalor, with swarms of crippled, diseased, 
and leprous beggars combine to form a population of countless 
races, poisoned and deteriorated physically and morally by 
sudden contact with a civilization too widely different from their 
own. The white man’s highly complicated and subtle civil 
organization, the growth of an immeasurably long period, 
during which individual development has kept pace with the 
evolution of the body politic, has been suddenly thrust with 
32 
