Chapter XIII: Part 13

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 2.—We said good-by to Victoria Falls this afternoon at 1:10, and left by train for the East Coast. Captain Moseley came to the station to see us, bringing all his hunting-dogs with him. Tomorrow morning at 3 o’clock he leaves for his new station in the interior, traveling in a wagon drawn by eight yoke of oxen and driven by two negroes. One of the negroes will sit up all night, to watch the grazing cattle, and guard the camp, and every afternoon he will sleep in the wagon. Ox teams travel very slowly, and the captain will walk most of the way, and hunt as he goes along. A negro servant accompanies him as cook, and will remain with him at the new station. His nearest white neighbors will be sixty miles away, and he does not expect to receive mail more than once in three months.... The train is not crowded, for a wonder, and we were given a double compartment thrown into one. Our traveling acquaintances, Mrs. Meek and her daughter Bettie, are still with us, and they have equally good accommodations. The South-African railway men take good care of you when it is possible.... The Bishop arrived at the Falls this morning, and baptized the photographer’s baby. A young curate came with him, and sat on the veranda and drank five highballs in quick succession. But the incident, like women smoking cigarettes in public, attracted no comment here. The Bishop is a genial man, and was soon surrounded by the women. The women dearly love an ordinary preacher, but to talk to a Bishop is an event in a church-worker’s life she never forgets.... During the dry season, full-grown cattle may be bought in parts of South Africa at $10 a head.... When I went into the hotel dining-room for breakfast this morning, the head waiter informed me in a whisper that a few fresh eggs had just been received from the hotel farm, and advised me to order soft-boiled eggs. This head waiter was born in the West Indies, and some of the men under him are Hindus, some of them negroes, and some of them Portuguese.... This is written on a piece of railroad track seventy-four miles long without a single curve, which is not a very big story: in Argentine, South America, there is a similar piece of track twice as long.... Possibly the reader imagines that ‘way over here I am a stranger in a strange land. As a matter of fact, I know nearly every passenger on this train; also, the conductor, and the waiters in the dining-car. I came up with the trainmen, and I spent four days with the passengers at Victoria Falls. All of them are either English or Colonials; no Americans except ourselves. Awhile ago, the conductor came into my compartment to visit awhile. He is an Englishman, but astonished me by saying that he likes German ships better than English ships. On English ships, he says, visitors are looked at with suspicion, whereas visitors are always welcome on a German ship. The conductor will go through with us to Beira, from Bulawayo, and has promised to do his best for us in the way of securing accommodations on the train. Englishmen who live out here soon have their sharp edges worn off, and become more agreeable.... There are certain American things that seem to be universal. Wherever we go, we see Eastman’s kodaks, National cash registers, Selig’s moving pictures, Colgate’s perfumes and soap, Chamberlain’s cough syrup, the _Ladies’ Home Journal_, Robert Chambers’s books, and Mr. Rockefeller’s gasoline.... It costs a good deal of money to have washing done over here, and we are wondering over the fact that the most reasonable laundry bill we have paid was at the Victoria Falls Hotel, where we expected nothing but highway robbery. When we registered at that hotel, the manager said he had two rooms reserved for us. They were double rooms, excellently located. Mrs. Meek and her daughter slept in one room, on two small beds, and they are grumbling because they were charged exactly what we were charged. It is so unusual for me to get the best of it that I am rather enjoying their indignation.... I have often heard of the extreme brightness of the nights in Africa. I cannot see that they are any brighter than the nights at home, except that there are a good many more prominent stars. In the north, we hear a great deal of the Southern Cross. We see it every night, but consider it insignificant. We are on the opposite side of the earth from Kansas, and the constellations we see there cannot be seen here. Pope, the Englishman, in describing great distance, wrote: “Far as the polar walk or milky way.” The people in Africa don’t understand the sentence: the milky way cannot be seen here, nor is our big dipper visible.... Tonight at ten o’clock, before going to bed, I went forward into the dining-car to get a drink of water, and found the car full of men drinking; a custom more common in this country than at home. The English laugh at our American habit of drinking ice-water. There is a certain Hot Water much worse, known as John Barleycorn, and Englishmen drink too much of it.... Poor Mrs. Atterbury, who has lived in South Africa nineteen years without a sight of her old home in St. Joseph, Missouri, says she longs to go home in order that she may again see pretty girls and babies. Mrs. Meek, our traveling acquaintance, who has always lived in the Transvaal, admits that pretty girls and babies are scarce here. They do not seem to thrive in this climate. Another peculiarity is that nearly all the women have black hair; a blonde with blue eyes is a great rarity in Africa. When a woman’s hair isn’t black in Africa, it is a fiery red.... The country between Victoria Falls and Bulawayo seems to be better developed than the country between Bulawayo and Mafeking. This afternoon, eighty or a hundred miles from the falls, we stopped at quite a coal-mining town, and saw great rows of coke ovens.

THURSDAY, APRIL 3.—In order to reach the sea at Beira, we were compelled to travel back to Bulawayo from Victoria Falls, and remain there from 7:30 A. M. until 10:30 P. M. We devoted the day to an automobile ride, and visited the Khami ruins, fifteen miles from the town.... Many centuries ago, Africa was inhabited by a race far superior in intelligence to the present native negroes. These people left the country hurriedly, for some reason, and it was one of their deserted towns we visited today. Some learned investigators say the ruined and deserted cities were built long before the Christian era, probably in the time of Solomon, and that the gold with which Solomon’s temple was adorned, amounting in value to ten million dollars, was mined in Africa. There seems to be no doubt that the gold mines in Rhodesia were worked many centuries ago; the workers in the mines today find unmistakable evidence of previous occupation.... The ruins we visited are scattered over a good many acres, along a river in which there is only stagnant water. Some of the more extensive buildings seem to have been used for defense. These are of stone, without mortar, and hundreds of feet of the walls are in as good condition as they ever were. There are great cisterns for holding water and grain, and modern builders say the cement was probably made on the ground, by a process of which they have no knowledge. Some of the cisterns, if cleaned out, would probably hold water today. Many relics have been picked up about the place, which may be seen in a museum at Bulawayo, and these indicate that the inhabitants were nearly as far advanced as the ancient Egyptians; they were able to smelt metals, and they had various kinds of domestic utensils, pottery, implements of war, etc. The people of Khami knew something of dentistry, of medicine, and of astronomy. Five hundred ruins or vestiges of former buildings are found in Rhodesia, extending over an area 800 by 700 miles, and all these are undoubtedly much older than Columbus, and probably older than Christ.... Recently ruins have been found in Thibet very much older than the ruins in Egypt, and, as investigations are more carefully made, the fact becomes more apparent that no one has yet been able to realize how old the world actually is.... In going to the Khami ruins, we passed hundreds of negro women walking into Bulawayo and carrying vegetables, chickens, firewood, etc. They were all naked above the waist, and invariably carried their loads on their heads; one woman carried a watermelon in this unusual way. The chickens were carried in rough home-made baskets.... The ruined city of Khami is in a wild and desolate country. On the way there, we saw only one or two farm-houses occupied by white men, and not many native huts. The country looked dry and worthless, and the roads were badly washed by torrential rains. The ruins are located in hills, and the day was so hot that we did not climb up to several of the most extensive-looking fortresses. Nothing is positively known about Khami; who the people were who built the town, when it was built, how long occupied, or when deserted, is pure conjecture.

FRIDAY, APRIL 4.—We should have left Bulawayo last night at 10:30, but the train was late, and we did not get away until after 1 o’clock this morning. By the time we got our beds made, it was almost time to get up for breakfast. This is the first time we have found a train more than a few minutes late in either Australia, New Zealand, or Africa.... I awoke at daylight in the prettiest country we have seen in Africa; a country as handsome as the prairies of Illinois must have been a hundred years ago. Thousands of acres of gently rolling prairie land, but it looks better than it really is. In 1896 the dreaded rinderpest killed all the cattle and game in this section, and carts stood idle in the roads because there were no oxen to move them; the air was rendered offensive by the stench from dead animals. Whether you try to raise stock, fruit or corn here, you have pests to deal with, and they seem to be more persistent and numerous than pests are elsewhere. We hear of great drouths, and of the people paying a shilling a gallon for water. Some of the towns have built electric-light plants, but often there is no water for the engines, and people use candles for illuminating. Enterprising men build modern hotels in the towns, but frequently there is no water for the modern baths, and the guests do well to get enough water to drink.... Another pest here is white ants. They kill forest trees, and undermine the foundations of houses; they devour furniture and clothing—yet the country is so fair that it seems a pity to turn it over to desolation. On the line between Bulawayo and Salisbury there are a good many towns, including one built around the best gold mine in Rhodesia. And how the people turned out to see the train come in! At one place we estimated that there must have been five hundred around the station. Trains travel over the line only two or three times a week, and people seem to come from great distances in the country to see the trains go by. But between the stations there were millions of acres of land as wild as it was in the days of Adam.... Early in the morning our English passengers walked about in pajamas when we stopped at stations; Englishmen love that sort of thing. At Victoria Falls they visited the Rain Forest in pajamas, and in Johannesburg I was told that on Sundays and holidays, pajamas are worn around houses and yards until lunch-time. Englishmen show their pajamas so much that I cordially hate that particular form of night-dress; Englishmen have the same passion for running around in pajamas that American boys have for running around in baseball suits.... In spite of occasional calamities such as 115 in the shade, and drinking-water selling at a shilling a gallon, Rhodesia is progressive, and encourages every enterprise. I have been frequently told here that the United States agricultural bulletins are the best in the world, and that they are read with interest in Rhodesia. Another statement you hear frequently in Africa: “They have adopted the American method;” but the trouble is, they haven’t the American means to work with.... A London man told me today that he buys _Harper’s Magazine_ regularly for two cents, although Americans are asked thirty-five cents for it. A good many of the American magazines sell their surplus copies in London at ridiculously low prices.... The negroes in the most civilized portions of Africa practice witchcraft, and the authorities are compelled to closely watch the native doctors and priests, to prevent outrages and murders.... We arrived in Salisbury at 5:30 in the evening, and remained there four hours; railroad trains make long stops at stations here without any apparent reason, unless it is that the engineer, station-master and guard cannot agree on starting. The first preliminary for starting a train in Africa is for the station-master to ring a hand-bell. Next the guard blows a tin whistle, to indicate that he is ready, and the engineer then blows a blast on the steam whistle. I have heard these preliminaries gone through with a dozen times before the train finally started; when the station-master is ready, the engineer isn’t, and when both these officials are ready to start, the guard isn’t. When the guard is ready, the engineer and station-master seem to conclude to let him wait awhile. And so, after a time, they begin all over again, and, in the course of fifteen minutes, finally get away.... There is an English woman on the train who is leaving Africa because of bad health. Her husband is also an invalid, as a result of the fever; in addition, he lost everything he brought to the country. This woman says there is a plague for everything in Africa. We walked about Salisbury with her, while waiting for the train to depart at 9:30 P. M., and the town seemed as disconsolate as our traveling acquaintance.... I ate dinner in Salisbury at a little restaurant, and shall always remember the place, because of two very pretty girl waiters, and because of the large number of young men who came in to flirt with them.

SATURDAY, APRIL 5.—Soon after breakfast this morning, we passed out of Rhodesia into Portuguese East Africa, at a little town the name of which I have forgotten. A Portuguese customs officer came on board, but did not bother us, beyond asking if we had either pistols or guns in our luggage. Being assured that we had not, he bowed very politely, and departed. The governor of Portuguese East Africa joined us at this station, traveling in a private car with his wife and a party of friends. A number of ladies and gentlemen had gathered to say good-by to the governor and his lady, and I shall never forget the politeness of these people. Our compartment was within a few feet of the observation end of the private car, but the Portuguese never saw us, while other people on the train stared at us as though we were very odd specimens of humanity.... Soon after passing into Portuguese territory, the railroad ran through mountains, and the ride was interesting all the way to Beira, which town we reached at 9:30 P. M. This section is tropical, and bananas and cocoanuts grow in profusion. Near one town we saw hundreds of acres of growing corn; and it was much better corn than we had been seeing in Rhodesia and other parts of South Africa. It wasn’t such corn as we grow, but it was probably half as good as an ordinary crop in eastern Kansas. I estimated one field I saw at four or five hundred acres; there were several others of fifty to a hundred acres. But the fields were widely separated. In eastern Kansas every foot of the land is devoted to crops, or pasture, or orchard, but here the occasional fields of corn were separated by miles of wild land. There is more rain in this section than in the vicinity of Bulawayo or Victoria Falls, and the stations on the railway more numerous.... As evening approached, we noticed that in the native villages, pots were boiling at open fires in front of the huts. Cook-stoves are unknown among the natives, and they have very little to eat except corn-meal mush. They make an intoxicating liquor out of corn-meal, and their holidays are largely devoted to revelry. The natives nearly all have cows, and drink a good deal of milk, first letting it sour, and become what we call clabber. Some of the greatest scientists claim that the free use of clabber-milk will preserve life well beyond a hundred years. The primitive races which live longest are liberal users of sour milk, which is claimed to destroy an intestinal bacteria very fatal to human life.... The line of railroad to the sea at Beira was built to get cattle to market from the fly district, Natal and the Cape having quarantined against cattle in Rhodesia and other districts subject to disease. The line from Bulawayo is seven hundred miles long, and operated through Portuguese territory by special concession. It passes through as interesting a country as we have seen in Africa.... At seven o’clock in the evening we passed into a swampy country, and mosquitoes became a pest. These were the dangerous mosquitoes, and we fought them viciously. And all day the weather had been oppressively hot.... At 9:30 P. M. we reached Beira, and had to pass our baggage through the custom-house. This ceremony concluded, we went to the Savoy Hotel in what they call a “trolley” here. A narrow-gauge street-railway has been laid all over Beira, but cars are not operated either by electric or horse power. Every citizen owns his own car, a small, light affair pushed by negro men. On the principal streets there are three tracks, and there is a system by which traffic is regulated. When we went up-town in a passenger trolley, the hotel porter came along behind, with our baggage on a freight trolley. Freight of every kind is carried to every part of Beira by these street-railway lines, and there are little steam locomotives which handle heavy freight at night. Beira is a Portuguese town, and passing through it at night on a trolley pushed by two negro men, was an unusual experience. When we reached the postoffice, the mail trolleys were unloading, and we were compelled to wait several minutes.... Reaching the Savoy Hotel, which is modern and comfortable, we went out on the veranda in front of our rooms, and saw the German ship “Burgermeister,” brilliantly lighted up, lying in the harbor. We shall go on board tomorrow, and remain twenty-four days, until we reach Naples, in Italy.

SUNDAY, APRIL 6.—This morning we took a ride around Beira on a trolley pushed by a negro man. The site of Beira is a sandbar reclaimed from the sea, and there is not a horse in the town; indeed, there is not a horse within a hundred and fifty miles of Beira, owing to the horse disease. There are no mule or ox-drawn vehicles, and no automobiles, owing to the streets of sand, so the queer street-railway supplies all transportation. There are cement sidewalks, but in the middle of the street the sand is ankle-deep.... The town looks like Manila, in a way, except that it is not so large. Banana and cocoanut trees grow everywhere in dooryards, as do the bright red flowers common in the tropics. Every house is raised six or seven feet above the ground, for additional coolness, and under many houses we saw natives cooking meals at open fires. In front of nearly every house was a private trolley; we saw hundreds of them during the ride. They were usually for two passengers, and covered, for the sun is always very hot here. I should say the average private trolley costs fifteen or twenty dollars, and has four light iron wheels. One man may easily lift a trolley off the track, which is the manner of disposing of them when not in use. As the town grows, the street-railway tracks are extended, and many house-owners build private lines to their premises. It is the most curious thing I have seen on the trip; I had never before seen street-railways of this kind, or heard of them. There is a bathing-beach here, and it can be reached only by these peculiar hand-pushed cars. The street-railway lines extend not only to every residence section, but to every business section, and to the railroad yards as well as to the ship docks. The lines were built by the city, and were not very expensive, as the rails are light. The up-keep is provided for by an annual tax paid by every trolley-owner for the privilege of using the tracks. Many business men have several trolleys; one or more for their own use, one or more for the use of their families, and one or more for freight purposes. Although the streets of Beira are composed entirely of sand, the sand is heavy, and does not blow about as dust. The weather last night was cool, but the days are very hot.... The Savoy Hotel at Beira overlooks the sea, and its grounds would be flooded at high tide but for the protection afforded by a sea-wall. One might sit on the back porches of the hotel, and fish in the sea. The waiters are native boys wearing white coats, and dresses such as women wear. A black man wearing a coat and dress is a queer sight, and I know of nothing in towns more unusual than Beira. It is thoroughly Portuguese, and everything is quaint and picturesque. Beira has a very bad reputation; you hear up the line that everything that is disagreeable will happen to you there, but we rather liked the place. The hotel was good, and the people polite; we encountered nothing disagreeable at Beira except tremendously hot weather.... We went aboard the “Burgermeister” at 2 P. M., and sailed two hours later. A Cape Town theatrical man named Sam Marks, had a letter of introduction to us from traveling acquaintances, and secured us seats at table with his wife and three other English-speaking people. So everything was very pleasant until Adelaide went down to her room to dress for dinner. She found that she had been assigned to a cabin with a Portuguese woman and a little baby. The woman cannot speak English, and has a Kaffir man nurse for the baby. The Kaffir man is in the woman’s room most of the time looking after the baby, and was there when Adelaide went down to dress. The chief steward, when the matter was called to his attention, was sorry, but proposed no other remedy than to keep the negro boy out. We then took the matter up with the captain, who speaks very good English, and he arranged it by giving Adelaide a room to herself.... No religious services were held on board in honor of the day, but a dance was held on deck, in the evening. The ship band plays a concert every morning at 10:30, and every evening at 9 the orchestra plays.... When we left Beira, the sea was as smooth as a millpond. At 10 P. M. a wireless telegram announced that a bad storm was raging there. For several days we have had intensely hot weather, but at sea we found a delightfully cool breeze, and Captain Ulrich says that at this season we should have smooth seas and agreeable weather all the way to Naples.... The passengers are mainly Germans, as this is a German ship. There are a few English, a few Colonials, and a few Portuguese, but we are the only Americans. In the steerage there is a great mingling of races, including Hindus, negroes and Arabs. These people bring their own bedding, and do their own cooking. As soon as the freight was stored away, and the forward hatchway covered, the steerage passengers settled down for the night, and produced their bedding and cooking utensils. Some of them eat rice, and some of them eat corn-meal mush, but all of them eat with their fingers. Somewhere a fire is provided where they may cook their food, and plenty of water may be had at a convenient faucet. The firemen are Arabs, and they mingle with the steerage passengers. I had always imagined that an Arab was fond of ease, and lazy, but Captain Ulrich says they are the most reliable firemen to be had, and the most efficient.

MONDAY, APRIL 7.—We have spent a good part of this day lying off Chindi, a decaying town at the mouth of the Zambesi river. We arrived at 9 A. M., and anchored in the open sea, where we rolled and pitched gently until 4:30 P. M. It seems the “Burgermeister” is ahead of time, and the tender did not come off until 2:30 P. M. It brought two hundred negro boys, sixteen to eighteen years old, and entirely naked except that each one wore a cloth about the loins. These boys had been sent to work on sugar plantations by labor agents, who received a pound each for finding them. But the boys soon contracted dysentery, and are being sent home. When the tender came alongside, many of the boys were seasick, and some of them crying. They were transferred from the tender to the ship in a huge basket, ten or twelve at a time. Many of the boys had sore feet, having walked to Chindi from the plantations where they were employed. All of them were thin in flesh, and nine out of ten had no baggage; nothing to eat out of, and nothing to sleep on: no possession whatever except a loin-cloth, and some of these were made of grass, or of old matting. The slaves of olden days could not have presented a much worse spectacle. These boys worked on the sugar plantations at $1.75 per month. Counting interest on money invested, and taking into consideration the fact that old slaves must be cared for, that is cheaper than owning slaves.... Ten white passengers also came out on the tender, and of course these were brought on board before the negroes. The passenger basket is a huge wicker affair in which six to ten persons are locked. Then it is hoisted, by means of a donkey engine, from the tender to the deck of the ship, or _vice versa_. Sometimes, when passengers are disembarking, and the basket is being lowered to the deck of the tender, the waves send the tender upward quickly, and the passengers get a bad jolt. In the open sea, the small tenders roll and knock about so much that this method of handling passengers is necessary. Several children were brought on board, and in every case they screamed with fright. But if the tackle holds, the method is safe enough.... The “Burgermeister” is the best ship we have been on since leaving home. The food is abundant, and well cooked, and the service excellent in all respects. Captain Ulrich is the youngest captain I have ever seen on a steamship; he is not more than forty years old, and probably under that age. He is a famous man on the line because of the dignified interest he takes in passengers. He told me last night that during the present trip he hadn’t had an hour of bad weather; and he left Hamburg February 25, and came through the dreaded Bay of Biscay and the stormy English channel.... Chindi is the port of entry for Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, and the Zambesi river enters the ocean there. Small boats ply on the river, and there are sugar plantations in the interior. It is generally believed that Chindi will be greatly harmed by a new railroad to be built from Beira.... Nyasaland is one of the modern achievements in colonization. Although in the heart of the Dark Continent, and given over only a few years ago to the most appalling barbarism, it now has a railway service, settlements lit by electricity, vast tracts of land under scientific cultivation, an improved wagon-road 100 miles long, a stable government, and cheap land, on which may be grown corn, cotton, and tobacco. I hear even at this distance of one planter who made $10,000 in one year from tobacco.... In order to reach Nyasaland at present, travelers leave ships five miles off Chindi, being transferred to tenders in baskets. At Chindi they take small boats for Port Herald, two hundred miles up the Zambesi river. The negro engineers on these steamboats get $3.75 a month. The captain of the boat is a white man, and an engineer, but natives have learned his trade, and now do all the work in the engine-room. This is true all over Africa: the white men show the negroes, and the negroes pick up all the trades. At Port Herald begins a railroad one hundred and thirteen miles long, with very stiff grades, running into the interior. There are only four white men employed on the line: the general manager, the traffic superintendent, the chief accountant, and the locomotive foreman. All the telegraphers are negroes, and do their work well for $2.50 a month. In order to become telegraphers, it was necessary for them to learn to read and write English. The head boy in the general offices of the railway, a very capable clerk, gets $3.75 a month. The locomotive engineers are Hindus, and receive $30 a month; but the firemen are all negroes, and receive but $3.75 a month. All the firemen are capable of running engines, and do run them at times. It is only a question of a few years until negroes succeed the high-priced Hindus as locomotive engineers. The section reached by the railroad is devoted largely to tobacco and cotton. One planter has five hundred acres in tobacco, and employs eight hundred natives; it is estimated there that tobacco requires a man and a half to every acre. These natives receive $1.25 a month and board, but their board costs only two cents a day; they eat only corn-meal, which costs a dollar a hundred pounds as a rule. That amounts to less than $2 a month for a good workman. A tobacco planter in Nyasaland is satisfied if he gets five hundred pounds of cured tobacco per acre, one-third of the yield in the United States, and he sells it on an average for seven or eight cents a pound. You would think his freight bill would eat up his profits, but he pays only half a cent a pound for transporting his crop to London. The rate is purposely made very low, to encourage tobacco-growing. It is not equally low on second-class merchandise in other parts of Africa; that rate from Capetown to Bulawayo, a merchant told me, is four cents a pound.... Food is very cheap in the interior of Africa. In Nyasaland, a half-dozen chickens may be bought for twenty-four cents. A young man on board is an employee of the Eastern Telegraph Co., and is being transferred to Zanzibar. He says he has chicken so frequently that he despises it; his associates lately joined him in a protest to the company against chicken. The chickens here are small and tough: every native raises chickens, which are compelled to pick up a living: they are not fed. The natives do not eat them, but carry them great distances to market.... The whisky used by the natives is made of corn, by a very simple process. They crush the grains of corn, pour water over the mass, and allow it to ferment. Then they add water, and put it away in earthen jars until needed.... One of the most interesting men on board is an official of the British company which built the railroad from Port Herald, two hundred miles up the Zambesi river from Chindi, into Nyasaland. He is going to England for his vacation; the ships are all crowded now, as this is the favorite season for the exiles to go home. He says the English cotton and tobacco planters in Nyasaland are not very prosperous; they make a living, but not much more. They are pioneers, and pioneers rarely make a great deal of money. This man is named Metcalf, and had an attack of the African fever today. He dosed himself with quinine, and, going to bed, covered himself with blankets. There he perspired and suffered until the attack wore off. Many of the passengers of the “Burgermeister” are invalids going home to recuperate after an experience with the climate of Africa.

TUESDAY, APRIL 8.—It is fortunate I am not seasick, and laid up, for my cabin window looks out on the deck where the steerage passengers are. Early this morning I heard a babel of voices, and supposed all the negro boys were on deck, and talking at the same time. Looking out of my window, I discovered that fifteen or twenty Hindus were doing all the talking, while the two hundred negro boys were sitting around in perfect silence. The steerage passengers can look into my room, if so disposed, and often do. Before I finished dressing, the two hundred negro boys were fed. Each was given three ship biscuits, and weak tea was provided for those who could get to it. When the boys gathered around the teakettle, they reminded me of pigs around a swill-trough. The stronger boys drank the tea from cups made out of the hollow of their hands, and the weaker ones, or runts, got none. Several of the boys were living skeletons, and had evidently been very ill. I threw an apple to one of the runts, but he had never seen that kind of fruit before, and I was compelled to inform him by means of signs that it was good to eat.... Six of the boys sat together, and divided everything given them. I was told that they were brothers, although there wasn’t a year’s difference in their ages. Their father probably has a dozen wives, as polygamy is practiced by nearly all the natives.... While the negro boys were scrambling for the scant food provided by the steamship company, the other deck passengers were eating breakfasts of their own providing. In one place, six Hindu men were eating, seated in a circle; they seemed to be traveling together. In every party of Hindus, one of the number seems to be a half-servant, and he waits on the others. Several of the negro passengers are dressed like the Hindus, and do not seem to know any other language than Hindu. Other parties of diners on the deck were Arabs, and all ate with their fingers. Yesterday, as soon as the ship anchored off Chindi, the Hindus began fishing, the pastime of lazy people everywhere. All of them had hooks and lines in their baggage, and the cook provided them with fresh meat for bait. A dozen or more fish were caught, of a variety resembling our catfish. One Hindu family caught three fish, which were “cleaned” for dinner in the dirtiest manner imaginable. I saw the Hindu mother finally prepare the fish for the fire, and this was the way she did it: Each piece of fish was dusted with curry powder before going in the pot, as we dust fish in cracker-meal for frying. Then she put in a few pieces of potato and onion, and a crushed mass of some sort of vegetable. The woman’s hands being covered with curry and the crushed vegetable referred to above, she washed them in water, and poured the water into the pot with the fish. Then the half-servant took the pot away, and evidently placed it on the stove of the crew cook. In an hour he brought it back, and the mess was allowed to cool, after which the six members of the family gathered around, and ate with their fingers. The mother made a drink in the following manner: A little condensed milk was poured into a dirty washbasin nearly full of water. Sugar was added, and this beverage was passed about, and drank with a relish. One member of the family was a girl of fourteen, rather pretty, but dirty beyond description. A boy of eleven was also very good-looking. The mother, after dinner, lit a cigarette, and handed it occasionally to her husband, who took a few puffs, and handed it back to his wife.... Speaking of smoking cigarettes, last evening Adelaide and I sat with a party on deck to drink coffee after dinner. There were five ladies in the party, and Adelaide was the only one who did not smoke a cigarette with the coffee.... The poorer class of Hindus seem to be the laziest class of people in the world; the poverty of the people of India is due more to shiftlessness than to British oppression.... The weather has been superb all day, and land in sight nearly all the time.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 9.—Shortly after breakfast this morning, we went ashore at the old Portuguese town of Mozambique, and wandered about until the big ship whistle warned us, at 1 P. M., to go on board. When we went down the ship’s side to enter the small boats which carry passengers ashore at a shilling each, we were mobbed by the Arab boatmen, who were quarreling over our patronage. They fought viciously, and many of them fell into the sea, but we had had no excitement for several days, and rather liked the commotion. There were certainly two boatmen for every passenger, and the noise they made was tremendous.... Mozambique is Moorish in design, and I greatly enjoyed my visit there. The streets are narrow and crooked, and the houses hundreds of years old; in some of them may still be seen the windows of mica with which they were originally fitted. Everywhere are the most delightful little parks, and wherever you go in the town you cannot see your way out, as the streets are crooked, and you see only queer old houses with thick walls of stucco. In most towns the streets are straight; there are long rows of houses on either side, and the streets end in a distant view of the country. But Mozambique apparently tries to hide the fact that it is a small town, so no street runs straight for more than a block or two, when it turns; thus you are constantly in a maze of houses. The streets are not more than thirty feet wide, and as all doors are open, owing to the intense heat, the visitor gains an intimate idea of the habits of the people. The Portuguese are related to the Spanish, so their houses have interior courts, and these are provided with gardens or fountains, when water can be had. I have never seen anything more quaint than the shops of Mozambique; it is a small, dull town, and its people are therefore polite. Seven out of ten of the inhabitants are negroes, but the negroes live in a location to themselves, and their houses are almost as unusual as the houses in the white town, for they differ from all the other negro huts I have seen in Africa.... Mozambique has an old fort, and the stones with which it is built were brought from Portugal in the rude ships of three or four hundred years ago. Its cannon are falling to pieces from rust, and I doubt if there is a big gun in the place that could be fired; but a Portuguese garrison is maintained there, and we were compelled to give up our cameras before going in—the soldiers feared we might take pictures of the fortification and sell them to their enemies. Portugal is the weakest of all nations, and has always been kicked about. It is unprogressive and poor, and people out here have very little more respect for the Portuguese than they have for the Kaffirs. Brazil once belonged to the Portuguese, and it became such a prosperous country that the court left Lisbon and located in Rio de Janeiro; the colony became greater than the mother country. But the inevitable revolution soon came, and Brazil is no longer a Portuguese colony, although there are more Portuguese there than in Portugal. Portuguese East Africa will become independent as soon as it wants independence.... The old fort in Mozambique has been assaulted and captured by the Arabs many times. This section was formerly the center of the slave trade. The Arabs began stealing the natives of East Africa and selling them as slaves, but the Portuguese saw that the traffic was profitable, and the two rivals for supremacy in what became a world industry, often clashed. It is related that on one occasion the Arabs besieged Mozambique fort many months, and when the garrison surrendered, only three of its defenders were left. There are no better fighters than the Arabs; they made up the armies with which Mahomet and his successors almost captured the world. The Mohammedan influence is still strong here; everywhere we see black men wearing the red cap which indicates the Mohammedan. Occasionally the red fez is supplanted by a white embroidered cap, indicating that its owner has visited Mecca, the holy city. On the ship, most of the deck passengers are Mohammedans, and we often see them at their prayers. A Mohammedan is as proud of his religion as a Salvation Army man, and when he is not praying, he reads the Koran with as much interest as a Christian Scientist reads “Science and Health.” As Christians say of the Bible, and Christian Scientists say of Mrs. Eddy’s book, every reading of the Koran displays new beauties.... Among our deck passengers, the only one who has been to Mecca is a big negro, and he is as devout as a Methodist class-leader. He has a prayer-rug, and seems to loan it to the Indians. Both the negroes and Indians should be ashamed to accept the Mohammedan religion, for it is a mark left on them by conquerors. Mohammedan Indians associate freely with negroes, but the Indians who have remained true to Hinduism do not.... In the history of the human race, probably more cruelty was practiced in the slave trade between Mozambique and Zanzibar than anywhere else in the world. And the negroes in the interior do not seem to be any more capable of defense now than they were when anyone was at liberty to enslave them. Human slavery is no longer practiced, either because of civilization among the stronger races, or because it doesn’t pay. Why should a planter go to the expense of buying slaves when he can hire a black laborer for $2 a month, and confine him to quarters, and make him work as many hours as he chooses? This is done in British territory all over Africa.... In Mozambique we visited the public market, and found that many of the negro women had their faces whitened like circus clowns, in order to look like white people. Adelaide weighs only a hundred pounds, and has rather a small waist, and all the negro women thought her waist was disgracefully small. One of them asked if she might measure it with a string. Permission being granted, and the measurement made, the string was passed around, and attracted a babble of disgusted comment from black ladies with the middle-age spread.... Young chickens were sold at the market at eighteen cents each, and everything else was equally cheap. Mozambique is built on a coral island, three miles from the mainland, and everything is brought in by boats.... The Englishman is a grave sort of person, and has little sense of humor, but Sammy Marks, the theatrical man, made me laugh today. In walking about Mozambique, we came across a school in which forty children of all races were reciting in chorus to an Arab teacher seated on the floor. “Children,” Mr. Marks said to them, “don’t you know this is a free day? Sammy Marks is in town, and you can take your books and go home.” Some of the children understood the words “free day,” apparently, for after a little preliminary chatter, every child in the room dashed out the front door, leaving the teacher to wonder what had happened. The English are great in commerce and war, but I never before knew one who had a real sense of humor.... One of the passengers on the “Burgermeister” is a Frenchman, and as he sits at our table, we know him very well. He is an old traveler, and knows how to handle ship servants. He eats more food, and drinks more wine, than any other human being I have ever been acquainted with. But he is a very polite man, and speaks German as well as French, so that he is of the greatest assistance when I get into difficulty with the German waiters. He is always buying champagne, and has five or six boxes of cigars in his cabin. He usually has not only his waiter hovering over him when in the dining-room, but the chief steward as well, and his capacity for getting what he wants is so great that he amuses me, although an electrical engineer at the same table is mad at him, and talks about a personal encounter.... I visited Mozambique with Sammy Marks, the theatrical manager from Capetown, and theatrical men are usually able to get what is coming to them. But Sammy Marks could not find a ricksha for hire in Mozambique. We saw plenty of rickshas, but were told that they were privately owned. Just as we acknowledged that rickshas were an impossibility in Mozambique, along came the Frenchman in one. Learning that Mrs. Marks and Adelaide were very tired, he gallantly turned his vehicle over to them. He went away for a few minutes, but soon came back riding in another ricksha, and continued with us in it until we returned to the boat-landing. Mrs. Marks speaks French like a native, having been born in Paris, and when I make a remark at table that interests her, she translates it to the Frenchman. One day I was asked to tell an “American story,” and it happened to greatly amuse Mr. and Mrs. Marks. The Frenchman did not catch the “story,” saying I talked too fast in telling it. Thereupon Mrs. Marks translated it, and the Frenchman was convulsed with laughter. Mrs. Marks telling my “story” in French, and the Frenchman listening seriously and intently, was a very amusing experience to me.... When we were ready to return to the ship, we found the tide out, and the Arab boatmen carried us to their boats. One boatman, in carrying a very fat woman, stumbled and fell in the water, and the fat woman was soaked.... Arriving at the “Burgermeister,” my boatman demanded 800 reis for carrying two of us to the town and back. The amount startled me, but it turned out that 800 reis amounts to only ninety-six cents in American money.... A Portuguese gentleman became a passenger on the “Burgermeister” at Mozambique, and a number of friends came aboard to say good-by. They were so busy drinking in the smoking-room that they did not note the whistle which blew for visitors to depart; so when we were a mile out, we were compelled to stop, and signal for a tug to come after them. As the visitors departed each one embraced his friend again, with great deliberation. Meanwhile Captain Ulrich was walking the bridge, swearing like a pirate. Just when it was thought the captain would explode with indignation, he was told that the mail had not been sent on board, and he was actually compelled to turn the huge ship around and return to the harbor, where we whistled ten minutes before the sleepy Portuguese put off in a boat to see what the noise was about. We were delayed an hour and a half by the sleepy Portuguese, and nearly everyone on board is cursing them. The Portuguese are everywhere regarded as slow and unenterprising, and countries controlled by them do not prosper.... I shall long remember Mozambique as the quaintest town I have ever visited. I had never heard of it, therefore it was a surprise.