40 
THE K1LIMA-NJABO EXPEDITION. 
CHAPTER III. 
THE START—MOMBASA TO TAJTA. 
After a month’s sojourn in Zanzibar, most agreeably 
spent as the recipient of Sir John Kirk’s hospitality, 
all my arrangements for commencing my expedition to 
Kilima-njaro were completed. I had hired upwards of 
thirty porters, most of them old employes of Mr. 
Stanley’s on the Congo, and despatched them to Mom¬ 
basa in an Arab dau, while I followed in the mail- 
steamer going north, accompanied by my personal 
servant, a Tamil boy from Ceylon. I took leave of 
Sir John Kirk with considerable regret one dark even¬ 
ing after an unusually agreeable dinner-party, and 
entered a little rowing-boat, which was to take me to 
the steamer, with a feeling of such downheartedness 
that my calmer reflections told me Zanzibar was likely 
to prove my African Capua. After my own experience 
I could realize now how previous explorers had been 
unnerved and unfitted for the rough life of the wilder¬ 
ness by the luxurious and easy-going life in Zanzibar. 
Fortunately the steamer I was journeying in to Mom¬ 
basa was the same vessel which had brought me down 
to Aden, so that I once more found myself among 
friends. The night I left Sir John Kirk’s was stiflingly 
hot, and the steamer was full of passengers—I shuddered 
at passing the night in a poky cabin with three other 
