him to the landing. Other boatmen constantly joined our procession,
and we were soon in the center of a howling, fighting mob, but we had
promised No. 67, and were faithful to him. At first, he was one to a
hundred, but as we neared the landing, his three companions came to
his assistance, and we were finally able to go aboard No. 67. I sat
in the stern, and handled the tiller-ropes, and the ride out to the
ship was cool and enjoyable.... Arriving at the ship, we found it
surrounded with freight barges, and loading in furious progress. Eight
steam winches were at work, four forward and four aft, and hundreds
of screaming natives were swarming over the barges and down in the
hold where the freight was being stored. A man who lives in this part
of the world, and is familiar with it, says that when the natives are
talking, they are at work; when they are quiet, he stirs them up with
a stick, for he knows they are loafing. The loading on the forward
deck was not ten feet from my cabin, and the quartermaster assured me
it would go on all night. At 10: 30 there was a short rest, and the
native workers swarmed up from below, and over from the barges, to be
fed. The crew cook gave them pans of either rice or corn-meal mush, I
could not tell which, and the men sat around in groups, and ate it with
their fingers. The deck passengers, who have comfortable quarters over
the hatchway when we are at sea, scatter everywhere when the hatches
are uncovered, and loading is in progress.... I was much interested
in a negro man who had two wives. The women had little babies of
about the same age, and the husband seemed as fond of one wife as of
the other. The husband was a young man, perhaps twenty-five, and his
wives were still younger. The black babies were much better behaved
than the white ones in the first-cabin. Since the arrival of the five
white babies, the “Burgermeister” has been turned into a nursery. Some
mothers are disposed to be apologetic when their children annoy others,
but the mothers on the “Burgermeister” look at the other passengers
as though they are a mean lot for not assisting in taking care of the
babies. When a baby cries in my presence, I somehow feel as though I
made it cry. I learned the various processes of caring for babies in
bringing up my own, but had I not learned the art long ago, I might
learn it all on board the “Burgermeister,” from intimate association
with it. All the babies are German, except one Portuguese.... I
was more interested in Mombasa than in Zanzibar. It is larger, and
has better public buildings of every kind. The general impression
is that Mombasa has a bright future, while Zanzibar seems to be as
large as it can ever hope to be.... The known history of Mombasa
began a thousand years ago, but many say this section was settled,
and was the scene of fierce wars, long before the Christian era. It
has been Portuguese territory and Arab territory, and they quarreled
and fought over it constantly until the British took possession, and
told both contending factions to behave themselves. If the old forts
in Mombasa could talk, they might tell tales of bloodshed and cruelty
that would startle modern mankind.... Mombasa is the port of entry
for the vast territory of Uganda, a name which calls up memories of
Livingstone, Speke, Grant, and Stanley. The railroad beginning here
runs to Victoria Lake. It was this railroad on which Roosevelt made
his trip into the interior, riding on the cowcatcher much of the
way, and being in constant sight of big game. I have seen no wild
game except one pheasant, and a good many baboons, but it is all
around us, a few miles in the interior.... Imaginative writers draw
beautiful word-pictures of this country and its future, but the facts
are that it is a country beset with many pests and difficulties. I
have talked with men from many sections of it, but they do not tell
stories of wonderful prosperity. On the contrary, they tell stories
of hot weather, of natural difficulties to be overcome, and of hard
pioneering. Whoever lives here must not expect health; he must “go
home” as frequently as possible, to recuperate, as do our soldiers in
the Philippines. There are as many undeveloped “natural resources” in
the Philippine Islands as in Africa; the greatest difference is that
the African natives are better workers than the Filipinos, and not
so much attention is paid to their liberties as we are paying to the
liberties of the Filipinos.... This section is known locally as
“British East.” Some say British East Africa is a better country than
Cape Colony or Natal, or the Transvaal, or the Orange Free State, but
the general evidence is that it is not.... The “Burgermeister” has
a wonderful cargo in its hold. This morning I saw a lot of ivory come
on board, and asked an official what else we carried to the markets
of the world. We have rubber, cloves, Colombo roots, ginelda wood for
tanning, chrome ore, a great lot of copper ore, gum copal, copra,
cocoanut fiber, carianda seeds, great quantities of bullock and goat
hides, ostrich feathers, wool, raw cotton, coffee, tobacco, cotton
seed, cotton-seed oil in barrels, etc. A great deal more freight was
offered than the ship could accommodate, and much was left in the
barges after the “Burgermeister’s” hold was full. This freight comes
from the interior, and was brought to the coast by rail, by river, and
by bullock team; it does not represent the product of a section, but
of a continent.... We were told on coming on board last night that
an American and his wife had been added to the passenger list during
our absence. I looked the man over, and at once offered to bet two to
one that he was not an American. He wore a green hat, with the brim
turned down all the way ’round. No American ever wore a green hat, or
wore it with the brim turned down in that fashion. Besides, he smokes a
pipe all the time, and carries a bag of tobacco attached to his belt;
an English custom.... We lost nearly all of our friends at Mombasa.
Many of the passengers are new, and we must start all over in becoming
acquainted. Nine out of ten are Germans; there is an English line of
boats plying on the East Coast, and the English prefer their own ships.
Whoever travels out here will notice friction between the English and
Germans.... In spite of every cabin on the ship being full, and in
spite of the long delays in loading freight, the chief steward feeds us
well; it is not too much to say that the food is as good as may be had
on the best ships of the fine Atlantic fleet. While in port, we have
so many visitors that we are crowded, but at sea, we settle down, and
do very well.... There are several cases of the plague at Mombasa,
but not much attention is paid to them. The plague is always a pest
here, and occasionally it gets a big start; not long ago, Zanzibar was
a closed port for six months, and visitors were compelled to remain
there until the quarantine was raised. The Zanzibar hotel is a very
bad one, and a good many of the visitors hired houses and cooks, and
lived very comfortably.... Nearly all the natives of Mombasa are
Mohammedans, and when we passed through the town just after darkness
set in, it seems to me I saw thousands of men praying in the mosques. I
have never seen a Mohammedan woman praying; with people of that faith,
it seems to be the men who are religious. Among Protestants, you will
find ten religious women to one religious man.... The old fort at
Mombasa was once besieged thirty-three months, and when the garrison
finally surrendered the victors found only eleven men and three women
to butcher.... The Uganda State Railway begins at Mombasa, and runs
to Lake Victoria, source of the river Nile. On the way is Niarobi,
probably the most promising town in British East Africa. It was to
Niarobi Sammy Marks was going, to open a new theatre. Nearly all the
way to the lake, big game is constantly in sight from the railway
carriages. Lake Victoria is the second largest in the world, only Lake
Superior being larger. A trip of five days is provided on Victoria
Lake, in large and comfortable ships, which are occasionally out of
sight of land. It is in this section where ten thousand natives died
within a year from the terrible sleeping sickness, which is so fatal
that the government is now forcing the blacks to leave the infected
district.... On the railroad to Victoria Lake is Tsavo station,
where a pair of man-eating lions devoured thirty-three natives during
the construction work. Colonel Patterson wrote a book about “The Man
Eaters of Tsavo,” and its fame is worldwide. The terror of the native
workmen on the railway finally became so great that work was suspended
for a time. Then one of the engineers fixed up an iron cage, and spent
five nights in it. The second night he shot one of the lions, another
the third night, and the last one the fifth night. A good many hunters
in Africa laugh at the Tsavo story as greatly exaggerated; indeed,
I have heard it openly stated here that the Lion Lie is one of the
greatest jokes in Africa. Every hunter, the African people say, takes
home a fierce lion lie, and the world has come to believe thousands of
big stories about these animals that are ridiculous.
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16.—At noon today we left Mombasa for Aden; no more
stops for five or six days. Loading at Mombasa continued without
interruption for eighteen hours, and when the colored laborers went
away on barges, they cheered because of the completion of their long
task.... Outside the harbor, we encountered the first motion of
the voyage, and several of the passengers went to bed. The motion was
not great, but it was the first we have had. We had been wondering
what the “Burgermeister” would do in case of heavy weather, and found
her specialty is a pitch. The pitch is far more agreeable than the
roll.... We had been told by the captain to expect the hottest
weather of the voyage between Mombasa and Aden, but found the weather
cooler at Mombasa than at any other stopping-place, and at sea there
were actually spots on deck that were too cool.... At Mombasa we
took on an entirely new lot of deck passengers, and lost a number
who greatly interested me. One was a negro boy of fourteen, whom a
woman passenger was taking to Nairobi as a servant. She met him on
the streets of Mozambique, and, being attracted by his fair promises,
took him on board. The boy claimed to be able to speak five languages
in addition to “Kitchen Kaffir.” This is a language which all Kaffirs
understand, and it is the native language usually learned by whites.
I have a notion that a half-savage boy of fourteen speaking five
languages, speaks some of them very imperfectly.... The captain,
or some one for him, has suppressed the six babies on board. Nearly
all of them have male nurses, and these negro men, who are traveling
on deck-passage tickets, almost monopolized the first-cabin deck.
They had cribs and fences in which they confined their charges, and
getting about was almost impossible. There was so much grumbling that
the babies and nurses have been sent to the deck below, and we see no
more of them, although we can hear them. The halls of the baby deck are
encumbered with all sorts of nursing-bottles and other apparatus of
that nature, and we are compelled to wade through it when we go to our
rooms.... The lower class of Hindus are the filthiest people in the
world, judging from what I see of them on the lower deck, where a good
many of them are located as passengers. I cannot avoid seeing all their
domestic arrangements, and their indifference to dirt is amazing. I
notice that a good many of the negroes in Africa have adopted the Hindu
religion, having learned it from the Indians, who come to the East
Coast in great swarms. Religion naturally appeals to the negro, and
he adopts any form of it which attracts his fancy. But the great bulk
of the negroes on the East Coast are Mohammedans, having learned that
doctrine from the Arabs who sold them into slavery. You would think the
negroes would detest the Mohammedan religion and the Arabs, but they
do not. Many of the natives who are unmistakably Africans, claim to
be Arabs, and this evening I saw six Mohammedan negroes saying their
prayers at the same time. They observed me watching them, and took
particular pains to “show off.” One of them had a string of beads of
the kind used by the Catholics, and I am certain that he had picked
up this addition to his Mohammedan religion from the Catholics. All
religions become badly mixed by their different forms appealing to
other sects.... The orchestra played a concert on deck this evening,
for the first time in several days; we have been so busy loading
cargo that there was no time to think of music.... I find that we
took on an American passenger at Mombasa; A. B. Hepburn, of the Chase
National Bank, of New York, and Comptroller of Currency under President
Harrison. He has been hunting in the Niarobi section, and told me he
was the only one in his outfit who did not get the fever.
THURSDAY, APRIL 17.—We crossed the equator at noon today, and are once
more in our proper hemisphere. There were no exercises; usually the
sailors engage in foolishness, and scare those who have not crossed
before, by threatening to duck them in the swimming-tank. There is not
a great deal of foolishness on German ships; on the English ships,
so much is made of sports that many passengers seriously object. I
selected a German ship instead of an English because I was thoroughly
disgusted with the Sports Committee on the “Anchises.” Every hour of
the day, almost, on the “Anchises,” a boy went about beating a gong, to
announce another meeting of the Sports Committee, which arranged for
potato races, sack races, and other silly performances. Nothing of that
kind on the “Burgermeister;” the passengers are genteel and quiet, and
let each other alone.... The English universally speak of the tomato
as “tomahto.” If that pronunciation is correct, why do they speak of
the potato as “potayto?” If “tomahto” is a correct pronunciation,
“potahto” is also better than “potayto.”... I notice that nearly
everyone speaks a little English. We have on board Germans, Russians,
Portuguese, Chinese, Belgians, French, Arabs, Hindus, and Kaffirs, and
all of them speak English, more or less. English will soon become the
universal language; there is no need of Esperanto, a language I have
never heard of anyone speaking. A band of reformers are urging that
all races learn Esperanto, in order that all men may have a common
language, but Esperanto is not making much progress.... Owing to the
crowd in the dining-room, my bath-room steward assists in waiting at
my table. He is a very capable and agreeable man; every morning when I
go to the bath-room, he says: “Good morning, please.”... I believe
that every woman on board, with one notable exception from Kansas,
smokes cigarettes. Young women walk about the decks alone, smoking,
and it always seems to me to be foolish. The fact that Adelaide does
not smoke, causes a good deal of favorable comment among the men. “I
may be old-fashioned,” I have heard many men say, “but I don’t like
to see women smoke.”... We have heard no American news for weeks,
except that J. Pierpont Morgan’s body has arrived in New York. I see
this announcement in every newspaper I pick up; when a cablegram is
received here, the newspapers warm it over for days.... In the
cablegram announcing Morgan’s death, the impression was given that he
had a bad stomach, and starved to death. The passengers talk a good
deal about this very rich man starving to death.... An Englishman
whom I know very well, and who talks Kaffir, takes a good deal of
interest in the negro passenger who has two wives. Today we went down
to the lower deck, and discussed matrimony with the man. Asked if the
system of plural marriages pleased him, he replied that if he had it
to do over, he wouldn’t marry at all. It seems that all the Kaffirs
who are deck passengers try to flirt with the man’s two wives, and he
is very uncomfortable. He says he showed his respect for women in a
practical way, by marrying two of them; that he pays their fare on the
present journey, but that a lot of young fellows expect his wives to
neglect him in order that they may amuse them. There is a good deal
of the same thing in the first-cabin, and several wives make their
husbands very uncomfortable by flirting with the young men.... The
barber on this ship charges only twelve cents for a shave; the price on
all other ships I know anything about is double that amount.... The
Germans and English have talked of fighting so long that I almost hope
they will finally be punished by getting at it. War is so unnecessary,
atrocious and wicked that every nation that even talks about it should
be punished.... This morning we passed an Arab dhow. It was not
more than sixty feet long, yet vessels of this type have been sailing
these seas for centuries. They have but one sail, and a crew of only
four or five men, but they are often entrusted with valuable cargoes.
They are stoutly but crudely built, and the one deck is covered with
straw thatch. The captain of an Arab dhow has no scientific knowledge
of navigation, and no instruments to take the sun, yet he knows the
currents and the stars, and makes as good time as modern sailing-ships.
Captain Ulrich looked at the dhow through his glass this morning, and
said the captain was taking every advantage of wind and current, and
that the most able navigator could not do better. Ships of exactly this
type were used thousands of years ago, and some I have seen along this
coast looked to be fully that old. An Arab dhow has no conveniences
whatever, yet they carry passengers as well as freight. Passengers
and crew live together under the single roof of thatch, and cook and
live in the most primitive manner. If the Arabs are not the dirtiest
people in the world, only the lower order of Hindus can wrest that
distinction from them.... Many of the passengers who came on board
at German East Africa ports, are half sick, and say they have had
enough of the African climate. I hear no praise of rural Africa from
those who have lived there; there are prosperous and healthy people
around Capetown and Durban, and in the Transvaal and Orange Free State,
but the interior of the country is grievously afflicted with dry
weather and serious physical pests.
FRIDAY, APRIL 18.—We have not been in sight of land for several days,
but the sea remains calm, and the weather cool; nothing going on except
the band concert at 10:30 A. M., and the orchestra concert at 9 P.
M. After the last-named event, we walk around awhile, and then go to
bed.... There are two amateurs on board who are returning from a
hunting trip, and on the aft deck they have a number of trophies. A
majority of the male passengers live in Africa, and have hunted a great
deal, so the two amateurs do not attract much attention. Leopards are
the great pest of the country, as they are very numerous. One man told
me this morning that only a few weeks ago, a leopard killed a negro boy
in his hunting camp. No hunting story is more than half true, so I do
not pay much attention to them. A hunter offered me a pair of buffalo
horns today, but I refused the offer; they were not worth the trouble
of carrying them home.... Captain Ulrich, of the “Burgermeister,”
does not sit at the head of the centre table in the dining-room, but
occupies a side seat at a side table.... Men object to wearing
evening clothes because of the stiff shirt. Soft shirts with pleated
fronts are generally worn with dress suits on the “Burgermeister,” and
they are said to be the latest in London. A coat and vest of white
duck, the coat as short as a waiter’s jacket, are also substituted
for the black coat and vest.... Every little while I meet a man
who says he prefers second-class to first class on a ship, because of
the lack of formality in the second-cabin. At Victoria Falls I became
acquainted with a man, and saw him again today on the second-cabin
deck. He says the informality there is so pronounced that some of the
Englishmen spend half the morning in the smoking-room wearing nothing
but pajamas. That, it seems to me, is carrying informality too far.
When a man travels in the second-cabin, he does it to save money, and
not because it is “more democratic.” I hate democracy when it amounts
to impoliteness and rudeness, as is frequently the case.... There is
a burly German officer on board in whom I am much interested, because
of the scars on his head and face. The scars were evidently received in
a student duel at the university, and I should like to see the bully
boy who decorated him so artistically.... I hear it stated every
hour of the day that Africa is a country of “great promise.” It seems
to me that Africa has been “promising” long enough, and should cease
being a game country. The United States turned the buffalo ranges into
farms; Africa would also get rid of its game if there were any demand
for its land from agriculturists.
SATURDAY, APRIL 19.—Today we are off Samoliland, the most worthless
part of Africa. It is controlled by the Italians, and is about as
savage as it ever was. There is one seaport in Samoliland, but steamers
rarely touch there, as it has no business.... The weather, which
we expected to be very hot in this part of the world, remains cool.
You often miss it when you expect misfortune.... There is a young
Canadian on board named Goult. It was at first reported that he was
an American, and he does look like one, as all Canadians do. He and
his wife have been on a hunting trip into the interior of Africa.
They had an outfit consisting of one hundred and fifty native men,
who packed their supplies and tents. The natives carried their own
food, which consisted of several thousand pounds of corn-meal; in
addition to this, they had meat when game was killed. The hunt lasted
nearly four months, and very few of the men deserted. When a native
porter deserts, he loses all pay coming to him; besides, he is liable
to arrest and imprisonment. Mr. Goult had a professional guide and
hunter with him, who organized and managed his outfit. They killed four
lions, but no elephants, although other game was fairly plentiful.
Mr. Goult says game animals in this section are infested with a tick
which renders them disgusting at times. Mrs. Goult told me this evening
that she suffered no hardship; that roughing it in Canada is very much
rougher.... The band on the “Burgermeister” is a very good one; much
better than is usually found on ships, and the leader has excellent
taste in choosing his selections. And this man is a waiter in the
dining-room, and young and good-looking.... The “Burgermeister” is
a slow ship, and makes about fifteen miles an hour: only half as much
as some of the big liners on the Atlantic. The Atlantic is the dandy of
oceans: no other has equally fine ships. But on the fast ships of the
Atlantic there is a vibration from the engines that is disagreeable.
The slow ships are much more comfortable than the fast ones. And the
Atlantic is also the bully of oceans; a voyage without rough weather
is rare. If the Atlantic were as smooth as the Indian ocean from Beira
to Aden, people would hear less of seasickness.... The captain is
taking home with him a baby deer that certainly does not weigh a pound
and a half. It is not as big as a rabbit, as it belongs to a family
of deer noted for diminutive size. The captain amused the passengers
this evening by feeding his baby with a bottle. First the captain smelt
of the bottle, to see that the milk was not sour. The baby has been
ill, and the ship doctor has been attending to it.... By-the-way,
the doctor has been behaving very well since his sweetheart left the
boat at Tanga. The women expected him to be gay, but he has been very
quiet and thoughtful, and the men are proud of him.... There is
nothing lazier or duller than a voyage in quiet seas. At one time this
afternoon, every passenger on my side of the deck was asleep.