Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/384

 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.

—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