Medinat-al-Barkah,
December 23, 1888.
DEAR MR. MOLYNEUX,—
I hope you don't resent my letters. You don't answer them, but then I told you not to. I shouldn't like to be a bore to you, or for you to feel—amid your piles of work—that you had an extra letter to write to an importunate little person in far-off East Africa. I said once I should go on writing every now and again, unless you ordered me to stop. As you haven't—Well! Here is another budget of East African news.
We have had alarums and excursions, as Shakespeare says. You will see by this address that I am on the mainland with my husband. When Captain B. disappeared last September into the ewigkeit the Agency at Unguja began receiving disquieting stories as to what was taking place in his absence. He had only left an Indian clerk in charge, and complaints arose from Indian merchants and English missionaries that no one could attend to their business. So Sir G. D. thought it best to send Spence over here to take charge, and, of course, I came with him to help him to interpret.
We found everything (a month ago) in a terrible muddle. The consulate is filthily dirty, the archives are just anyhow, and Spence fears a considerable sum is missing from the Consular receipts, or else that the clerk is muddled in his accounts. But all this you will hear officially.
Meantime, we are all uneasy about Captain B.'s disappearance. He left here last August with some idea of letting the missionaries know there was danger of ah Arab attack on all white people independent of their nationality, German or English. He seems to have translated Sir G.'s brief instructions into a permission to make a vast tour of the interior—a delightful thing to do, no doubt, but not when you have a Consulate to look after. He greatly alarmed all the missionaries, and, as it appears, somewhat needlessly. Those who have their stations in Usagara and farther south are very angry with him. He arrived at their stations early in September and ordered them to retire on the coast—or at any rate send their wives and children there, as the Arabs might attack at once. And after they had obeyed him the attacks never came off! One of the missionary ladies was in a certain condition, it appears, and the hurried journey so upset her that—how shall I phrase it?—her hopes were disappointed.
He next appeared at a place called Hangodi—according to native report—and was so anxious about the safety of a fair lady there (the missionary young woman who travelled out with him and me a year and a half ago)—that he took her away with him and has seemingly gone waltzing off to the unknown with this fair charge. Quite romantic, isn't it? In this case his warning as to an impending attack seems to have been only too well founded, if what has been reported to the Germans is true. Soon after he left this place—Hangodi—it was apparently attacked and destroyed and the missionaries all killed—except, of course, the lady who left with him. Ill-natured people will naturally ask why he did not stay and defend the station.
It is only two days off Christmas, and I can picture to myself the happy preparations going on at Spilsbury—the carols the village children are practising for Christmas Day, and the Christmas-tree which I am sure Mrs. Molyneux and your daughter are preparing for their reward.
These ridiculous sentimental Germans are, of course, getting up Christmas-trees, too, and are practising Carols to be sung round them, though the town is still more or less besieged on the landward side. Who and what was Good King Wenceslaus, and why should we sing about him at Christmastide? There is no library here, except the one they have at the French Mission, and that mentions nothing about Germany.