Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/408

 German East Africa. I shall remember this place particularly because the ship entered its harbor through an entrance which did not seem to be more than two hundred feet wide in one place, and because of the great number of Germans who came aboard, and remained all day, and nearly all night, drinking beer and singing songs. Most of our German visitors wore uniforms; Germany uses more uniforms than any other country in the world, population considered. We went ashore at 9, and found a very pretty modern town with the usual fifty blacks to one white. There is a hotel at this place which is considered a wonder, and a good many of the passengers went there for lunch or dinner All the time we were walking about, black ricksha boys followed us, and finally they proved a blessing when a rain came up; we entered the vehicles, and went to the hotel, where we found a lot of our passengers drinking beer on the verandas Cocoanut trees grow in great profusion here, and on one I counted fifty-four nuts. I have always had a notion that four or five nuts is a pretty good average for a cocoanut tree.

—We have been in three different towns today: Dar-es-Salaam, Zanzibar, and Tanga. We left Dar-es-Salaam at daylight, and stopped at Zanzibar for the mails at about 10, remaining an hour. Several of our friends came on board, but none of the passengers went ashore. Dozens of Indian merchants came out to the ship, and worked rapidly, as they expected the whistle to blow any moment. The