THE ISLAND OF MOMBASA 
35 
Company do the rest. This firm is ubiquitous in 
Mombasa and Zanzibar. They attend to everything 
for you, and relieve you from much worry, vexation 
and rupees. They pay your customs duties, get your 
mountains of stuff on the train for Nairobi, and all 
you have to do is to pay them a commission and look 
pleasant. The customs duty is ten per cent, on 
everything you have, and the commission is five per 
cent. But in a hot climate, where one is apt to feel 
lazy, the price is cheap. 
Thanks to the governor, our party of four was 
invited to go to Nairobi on his special train. It 
left Mombasa on the morning of the nineteenth of 
September, and at once began to climb toward the 
plateau on which Nairobi is situated, three hundred 
and twenty-seven miles away. We had dreaded the 
railway ride through the lowlands along the coast, 
for that district has a bad reputation for fever and 
all such ills. But again we were pleasantly disap¬ 
pointed. The country was beautiful and interest¬ 
ing, and at four o’clock in the afternoon we arrived 
at Voi, a spot that is synonymous with human ail¬ 
ments. It is one of the famous ill health resorts of 
Africa, but on this occasion it was on its good be¬ 
havior. We stopped four hours, inspected every¬ 
thing in sight, and at eight o’clock the special began 
to climb toward the plateau of East Africa. At 
nine o’clock we stopped at Tsavo, a place made 
famous by the two man-eating lions whose terrible 
depredations have been so vividly described by 
Colonel Patterson in his book, The Man Eaters of 
