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Updated: May 11, 2025
Probably the one human note that, everywhere persisting, draws the whole together is furnished by the water-carriers. Mombasa has no water system whatever. The entire supply is drawn from numberless picturesque wells scattered everywhere in the crowded centre, and distributed mainly in Standard Oil cans suspended at either end of a short pole.
The Portuguese occupation of Mombasa was, however, not without its vicissitudes. From March 15, 1696, for example, the town was besieged for thirty-three consecutive months by a large fleet of Arab dhows, which completely surrounded the island.
As it happened, these particular men had recently been on a long trip with an Englishman named Jutson, who had started from Mombasa, a port about 150 miles below Lamu, and journeyed right round Kilimanjaro, one of the highest known mountains in Africa. Poor fellow, he had died of fever when on his return journey, and within a day's march of Mombasa.
Godfrey had a comfortable and a prosperous voyage, since it was almost before the days of submarines, at any rate so far as passenger steamers were concerned, and they saw no enemy ships. Therefore, within little more than a month he landed on the hot shores of Mombasa, and could cable to Isobel that he was safe and well and receive her loving answer.
But in 1898, when the Colonel arrived, the railway had not been carried farther than the Tsavo, a tributary of the Sabaki, which enters the sea north of Mombasa. A temporary wooden bridge crossed the Tsavo, and the Colonel was to build a permanent iron bridge over the river, and had besides the supervision of the railway works for thirty miles in each direction.
This accomplished, we stepped out past the Sikh into the grateful night. We had as guide a slender and wiry individual clad in tarboush and long white robe. In a vague, general way we knew that the town of Mombasa was across the island and about four miles distant. In what direction or how we got there we had not the remotest idea.
But only the arrival of reinforcements from India on 3 September and the failure of the Konigsberg to co-operate prevented the fall of Mombasa, and only the inadequacy of the British maps, on which the Germans had for once to rely, frustrated their attack on the Uganda railway.
It was towards noon on March 1, 1898, that I first found myself entering the narrow and somewhat dangerous harbour of Mombasa, on the east coast of Africa.
Their life is spent in journeying to and from the interior, carrying heavy loads of provisions and trade-goods on the one journey, and returning with similar loads of ivory or other products of the country. They are away for many months at a time on these expeditions, and consequently as they cannot spend money on the march they have a goodly number of rupees to draw on their return to Mombasa.
The German forces were greatly superior to those of the British in East Africa, and the Uganda railway from Mombasa to Lake Victoria Nyanza running parallel with the frontier was a tempting object of attack. The Germans took the offensive against the British north and south-west, without achieving any great success.
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