Presently assuring my pandar that he had showed me nothing of any interest, I wished him to the devil, and made my way back to my attic.
June 2nd. I am now sitting under a tree away on the mainland. I got up early this morning, bought fruit, and crossed over to Free Town.
The path up the hill from the ferry almost like an English lane,—tall grasses and overhanging creepers. The sun very hot. I passed a village with native huts and Indian shops, and then along a straight, white dusty road between cocoa-nut plantations, very gay and bright, chequered with cool shadows.
Presently I left the road and walked until I came to this shady place, where I shall stay reading the whole day. I nearly stepped on a long green snake coming here, and this put me in mind of mortality.
June 3rd. Home yesterday just in time to hear my Mahometan perform his offices. I shall always make a point of being back at this hour. I come to like Mombasa—except for the few scurvy clerks at the Savoy Hotel, I see no Europeans at all. I derive peculiar pleasure from finding myself every evening, at exactly the same time, walking along the shore under the town, and up the rock-hewn steps, and along the narrow streets, past the fish market, to my attic.
In the tropics it is the hour before the setting of the sun which is always the most enchanted.
June 4th. All day on the mainland. Found P——— at dinner on my return. His conversation very refreshing after the chatter of these townsmen; we talked of country matters—of the afterbirths of cows, of scab, and of the cure for foot rot. I think, if I had looked, I should have found dung from the cattle boma on his boots.
June 5th. Every morning when I go to the fruit market to buy my luncheon I walk through the old part of the town: continually, I come upon ancient stone wells, very deep and beautifully constructed, and during the dusty overheated hours of mid-day suggesting delightful reservoirs of coolness. One meets far too many Indians in the streets; pallid, shifty people wearing tight, thin frock
