42 
THE KILIMA-NJAP 0 EXPEDITION. 
ford, of the Church Missionary Society, who had 
brought me round in the crisis of my fever, carried me 
oh to his station of Frere Town on the mainland 
(Mombasa is an island) to effect my convalescence, 
which, so pleasant was the nursing bestowed on me 
under his wife’s kind care, would have been quietly 
enjoyable had I not continually worried myself about 
my arrested work. However, my friends were not idle 
while I lay in enforced inactivity, and the Bevs. A. 
Downes Shaw, of Kisolutini, and Thomas Wake¬ 
field, of Jomvu, were both busily engaging porters for 
my caravan. 
At length I was so far recovered as to resume my 
preparations for departure, and I once more repaired 
to Captain Gissing’s house to pack my vast quantity 
of baggage into loads of a more or less uniform weight, 
averaging fifty pounds apiece. 
As yet Eastern Africa provides no other means of 
porterage than human labour, and all goods and 
chattels have to be carried on men’s heads and 
shoulders. There are donkeys to be bought, it is true, 
but they never seem to do well on long journeys, and 
are in no way to be depended on; besides, at the time 
when I was staying at Mombasa, asses were both dear 
in price and poor in quality. Thirty of my men had 
been, as already mentioned, engaged in Zanzibar, and 
it would have been far better for the fortunes of my 
caravan had I recruited all the porters of my expedition 
at that place, for the men who frequent the capital 
and emporium of the dominions of Sayyid Barghash 
are of a better stamp than the worthless A-nika 
and A-rabai that inhabit the vicinity of Mombasa. 
Why this should be is a problem very difficult to solve, 
and one not altogether unsurrounded by thorny ques- 
