Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/366

 is written on a piece of railroad track seventy-four miles long without a single cu ve, 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