Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/420

 *tween Mombasa and Aden, but found the weather cooler at Mombasa than at any other stopping-place, and at sea there were actually spots on deck that were too cool At Mombasa we took on an entirely new lot of deck passengers, and lost a number who greatly interested me. One was a negro boy of fourteen, whom a woman passenger was taking to Niarobi as a servant. She met him on the streets of Mozambique, and, being attracted by his fair promises, took him on board. The boy claimed to be able to speak five languages in addition to "Kitchen Kaffir." This is a language which all Kaffirs understand, and it is the native language usually learned by whites. I have a notion that a half-savage boy of fourteen speaking five languages, speaks some of them very imperfectly The captain, or some one for him, has suppressed the six babies on board. Nearly all of them have male nurses, and these negro men, who are traveling on deck-passage tickets, almost monopolized the first-cabin deck. They had cribs and fences in which they confined their charges, and getting about was almost impossible. There was so much grumbling that the babies and nurses have been sent to the deck below, and we see no more of them, although we can hear them. The halls of the baby deck are encumbered with all sorts of nursing-bottles and other apparatus of that nature, and we are compelled to wade through it when we go to our rooms The lower class of Hindus are the filthiest people in the world, judging from what I see of them on the lower deck, where a good many of them are located as passengers. I cannot avoid seeing all their domestic arrangements, and