Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

The two chief ports on the African coast of the Red Sea are Port Sudan and Suakim. They were nothing until the completion of the Red Sea road. The original plan was to use Suakim as the terminus of the Sudan railway. The English surveyors, however, finding a much better harbour at Port Sudan, extended the railroad to that point. The town which was a mere village a few years ago has now several thousand people, and grows like one of the mushroom settlements of the Canadian west.

Going on southward we passed the Italian possessions on the west coast of the Red Sea, where they have a colony known as Eritrea. This colony begins about one hundred and fifty miles south of Suakim and runs down almost to the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb. It is not wide, extending back from the coast only to where the Abyssinian hills begin. The Italians tried to add to Eritrea a large part of Abyssinia but failed, owing to the resistance of King Menelik. The land they have now is of small value. There are only a few tracts that can be irrigated, and the exports are unimportant. The strip is inhabited by nomads, who raise camels, oxen, sheep, and goats. As the pasturage is scanty, the shepherds have to move about from place to place with their stock. Some of the tribes live in tents. Their wants are simple to an extreme.

The chief Italian port is Massawa, a little town situated on a coral island joined to the mainland by a causeway. Its two short railways, which connect it with the Abyssinian hills, comprise about forty-eight miles of track. One road is to be continued to the town of Asmara, near which some gold mines have been opened.

The Italians have built a telegraph line from their port to Addis Abbaba, the capital of Abyssinia, and they are trying to increase their trade with that country. They are shipping considerable salt, which, strange to say, is so relished by the Abyssinians that it brings more than sugar and takes much the same place among them as candy and tobacco with us. The average Abyssinian carries a stick of rock salt with him and takes a suck of it between whiles. If he meets a friend, he asks him to have a taste of his salt stick and his friend brings out his individual stick and they take lick about. It is just as it was with snuff in the days of our forefathers, when everyone offered his friends a pinch of his choice macaboy.

Besides Eritrea Italy owns another and larger strip of East Africa. This is Italian Somaliland, which begins at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden and runs down to the border of the British coast possessions. We shall pass it on our way to Mombasa. Italian Somaliland, though about three times as large as Ohio, has a population only two thirds that of the city of Cleveland, and is of little value. The people, who are largely nomadic, are engaged in cattle raising and agriculture.

If you will look on the map, you will see that the Gulf of Aden seems to rest on a shelf-like projection jutting out from the African continent. This projection reaches into the Indian Ocean for a distance of seven hundred and eighty miles, and is sometimes called the “Great Horn of Africa.” It ends in Cape Guardafui, of which we shall have a good view from our steamer as it leaves the gulf and starts south.

The cape is a mighty bluff rising almost straight up from the blue waters of the Indian Ocean. Its sides are of black rock, ragged and rugged, and its top is covered with sand. There is sand at its foot and lodged in the crevices, making yellow streaks against the black background. Beyond the cape extend sandy hills which swell over one another until they are lost in the distance. The country all about is desert. Neither trees, bushes, habitations, nor animals are to be seen. The clouds hang low over the cape, and out at sea the air is as moist as that of Virginia in April. Seen from the ocean, the bluff assumes the outlines of a sleeping lion with its tail in the sand. Still farther out it looks like a fortification towering over the sea. One hundred and thirty miles to the eastward, on the direct route to India, is Sokotra Island, owned by the British.

We went on southward, passing British Somaliland, a country a little larger than the State of Missouri, with a population of several thousand Mohammedan nomads who roam about from pasture to pasture with their cattle and camels. The colony came into the hands of the British after the war with the Mahdi, having belonged before that to Egypt. It was first administered by the government of India, but it is now managed directly from London.