When leaving Durban I provided myself with a draft for $900 on a bank in Bombay, India, and $50 in cash. From the passengers I heard so many interesting things about British East Africa that I decided to go inland from Mombasa, if I could raise the necessary money on the Bombay draft. Taking my passport for identification, I learned from a banker in Zanzibar that he could not advance money on the draft, but that by cancelling the Durban draft and issuing a new one on the same bank in Bombay he could provide me with any funds needed. I agreed to that. On receiving the new draft I learned that $15 had been taken for exchange.
Tanga, German East Africa, a sea junction for that part of Africa, was our next stop. Passengers going to Europe from Durban and other points along the East coast trans-ship to the European liners going through the Suez Canal and Port Said.
A railway from this place pushes westward over 200 miles to the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, which rises to a height of over 19,000 feet. Tanga is another place that puts one in mind of a snake charming a bird and then devouring it. Cocoanut palms grow everywhere, and the pretty trees, frangi-pangi and flowers are enough to lure any one there. Yet a walk to the graveyard, after observing the large number of unsodded mounds for a population of 500, would soon alter one's opinion. The native population is 12,000.
One of the passengers made up his mind not to shave during the voyage from Durban to London. The Indian barber is the most useful tradesman the world over. He carries his kit with him, and is always prowling about for work. He will shave a man standing up or lying down; in the rain or in the sun; in bed or on the roof of a house—any time, any way, or any place an Indian barber will do his work. We no sooner stepped on shore than the unshaven passenger was picked out as a possible "job," and was shadowed by the black knights of the razor until he returned to the ship.
Rubber plantations are numerous in this section of the colony, and copra is another of the exports.
The horse of the East Coast of Africa is really the negro. Everything is moved on two-wheeled trucks, pushed or pulled with ropes by natives. No cattle or oxen were seen, so it is fair to conclude that neither cattle nor horses can live along this section of the coast. Any one can form an idea of what a sickly country it must be for human beings where cattle and horses cannot exist. Fever runs down the natives, also, but not in the same proportion as the whites.
"The last time we were in Tanga," the ship's doctor remarked on sailing, "I suffered terribly from jumping toothache. Fortunate in being in a port where there was a dentist, I called at his office and had it pulled. Asking him his charge, the dentist replied, 'Seventy-five rupees' ($25)." When my eyes again settled in their sockets, having bulged at mention of such a fee for pulling a tooth, the doctor, in answer to a question if he did not consider the dentist's charge exorbitant, said he was under that impression at the time, but was not so sure of it now. "Only a handful of Europeans live here," he philosophically went on to explain why he changed his impression from a positive to an uncertain one, "and fever is bad. The dentist—the only one within hundreds of miles—as most persons who come to the tropics, aims at making enough money in a few years, before fever robs him of his health, to take things easy for a while afterward in a good climate. Life, with a thumping tooth and a pumpkin-like face, was misery to me; I could not pull my tooth, and antidotes failed to assuage the pain it caused. So, considering the fee from various angles, I would not feel quite justified in charging the dentist with unprofessional conduct." Notwithstanding the doctor's reconciliation to the dentist's charge, it would seem he "paid for it through the nose," to use a British term for "stung," the standard rate in Africa for placing a tooth in a plate, whether one or sixteen, being only $5 each.
CHAPTER III
Mombasa, British-East Africa, was not reached until 19 days after sailing from Durban, although we traveled but 2,000 miles. It was a very interesting trip, though, along the East Coast, as the ship stopped so often to unload and take on cargo, that passengers obtained a fair idea of that part of the world.