Through Uganda to Mount Elgon . boarding. Firstcomes the doctor, who, having declared a cleansheet, goes off again to shore, his departure thesignal for another rush of boats of all sortsand sizes, with owners of every colour in therainbow. Letters for you from up-country, sayssome one, and I read to find myself locatedto Masaba. Wherever in the world is Masaba ? thoughtI, and left a question of geography, whichseemed impossible to solve at the coast, to becleared up when I should reach Mengo, thecapital of Uganda, and local headquarters ofour mission; and in the interval sought acloser view o
Through Uganda to Mount Elgon . boarding. Firstcomes the doctor, who, having declared a cleansheet, goes off again to shore, his departure thesignal for another rush of boats of all sortsand sizes, with owners of every colour in therainbow. Letters for you from up-country, sayssome one, and I read to find myself locatedto Masaba. Wherever in the world is Masaba ? thoughtI, and left a question of geography, whichseemed impossible to solve at the coast, to becleared up when I should reach Mengo, thecapital of Uganda, and local headquarters ofour mission; and in the interval sought acloser view of Mombasa, interesting always,but doubly so to one who saw it before theyounger world had begun to cut, and mould,and shape, and build as it is doing at thepresent day. Remembering my first visit in 1895 to theisland, with its narrow street of Arab houses,old Portuguese fort, innumerable smells, andcrowds of that happy-go-lucky, but useful,species of humanity, the Swahili porter, who,with his jolly smile, seemed to have but two. Old Mombasa 27 ambitions in life—the first to find out theexact state of ones health, with his continual Jambo bwana, jambo ? u hali gani ? andthe second to convince the new-comer thatto go off into the interior without such aparagon of usefulness and integrity as thespeaker would be the height of folly; I seeonce more the miserable aspect of the islandin those days! The one narrow, evil-smelHngstreet above mentioned, an English hospital,and Government House standing lonely anddesolate; the old native town, a mission hos-pital, and for all the rest—not excepting theold fort, although it was the home of criminals,of porters being kept under lock and key untilthe very moment of marching, and of thethen Postmaster-General—long grass, treesand brushwood, the paradise of snakes,leopards, and occasionally lions, which havebeen known to cross the channel from themainland. It was known, of course, that Mombasa wasan island, but very few realised that it p
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