Chapter XV: Part 15

THURSDAY, APRIL 17.—We crossed the equator at noon today, and are once more in our proper hemisphere. There were no exercises; usually the sailors engage in foolishness, and scare those who have not crossed before, by threatening to duck them in the swimming-tank. There is not a great deal of foolishness on German ships; on the English ships, so much is made of sports that many passengers seriously object. I selected a German ship instead of an English because I was thoroughly disgusted with the Sports Committee on the “Anchises.” Every hour of the day, almost, on the “Anchises,” a boy went about beating a gong, to announce another meeting of the Sports Committee, which arranged for potato races, sack races, and other silly performances. Nothing of that kind on the “Burgermeister;” the passengers are genteel and quiet, and let each other alone.... The English universally speak of the tomato as “tomahto.” If that pronunciation is correct, why do they speak of the potato as “potayto?” If “tomahto” is a correct pronunciation, “potahto” is also better than “potayto.”... I notice that nearly everyone speaks a little English. We have on board Germans, Russians, Portuguese, Chinese, Belgians, French, Arabs, Hindus, and Kaffirs, and all of them speak English, more or less. English will soon become the universal language; there is no need of Esperanto, a language I have never heard of anyone speaking. A band of reformers are urging that all races learn Esperanto, in order that all men may have a common language, but Esperanto is not making much progress.... Owing to the crowd in the dining-room, my bath-room steward assists in waiting at my table. He is a very capable and agreeable man; every morning when I go to the bath-room, he says: “Good morning, please.”... I believe that every woman on board, with one notable exception from Kansas, smokes cigarettes. Young women walk about the decks alone, smoking, and it always seems to me to be foolish. The fact that Adelaide does not smoke, causes a good deal of favorable comment among the men. “I may be old-fashioned,” I have heard many men say, “but I don’t like to see women smoke.”... We have heard no American news for weeks, except that J. Pierpont Morgan’s body has arrived in New York. I see this announcement in every newspaper I pick up; when a cablegram is received here, the newspapers warm it over for days.... In the cablegram announcing Morgan’s death, the impression was given that he had a bad stomach, and starved to death. The passengers talk a good deal about this very rich man starving to death.... An Englishman whom I know very well, and who talks Kaffir, takes a good deal of interest in the negro passenger who has two wives. Today we went down to the lower deck, and discussed matrimony with the man. Asked if the system of plural marriages pleased him, he replied that if he had it to do over, he wouldn’t marry at all. It seems that all the Kaffirs who are deck passengers try to flirt with the man’s two wives, and he is very uncomfortable. He says he showed his respect for women in a practical way, by marrying two of them; that he pays their fare on the present journey, but that a lot of young fellows expect his wives to neglect him in order that they may amuse them. There is a good deal of the same thing in the first-cabin, and several wives make their husbands very uncomfortable by flirting with the young men.... The barber on this ship charges only twelve cents for a shave; the price on all other ships I know anything about is double that amount.... The Germans and English have talked of fighting so long that I almost hope they will finally be punished by getting at it. War is so unnecessary, atrocious and wicked that every nation that even talks about it should be punished.... This morning we passed an Arab dhow. It was not more than sixty feet long, yet vessels of this type have been sailing these seas for centuries. They have but one sail, and a crew of only four or five men, but they are often entrusted with valuable cargoes. They are stoutly but crudely built, and the one deck is covered with straw thatch. The captain of an Arab dhow has no scientific knowledge of navigation, and no instruments to take the sun, yet he knows the currents and the stars, and makes as good time as modern sailing-ships. Captain Ulrich looked at the dhow through his glass this morning, and said the captain was taking every advantage of wind and current, and that the most able navigator could not do better. Ships of exactly this type were used thousands of years ago, and some I have seen along this coast looked to be fully that old. An Arab dhow has no conveniences whatever, yet they carry passengers as well as freight. Passengers and crew live together under the single roof of thatch, and cook and live in the most primitive manner. If the Arabs are not the dirtiest people in the world, only the lower order of Hindus can wrest that distinction from them.... Many of the passengers who came on board at German East Africa ports, are half sick, and say they have had enough of the African climate. I hear no praise of rural Africa from those who have lived there; there are prosperous and healthy people around Capetown and Durban, and in the Transvaal and Orange Free State, but the interior of the country is grievously afflicted with dry weather and serious physical pests.

FRIDAY, APRIL 18.—We have not been in sight of land for several days, but the sea remains calm, and the weather cool; nothing going on except the band concert at 10:30 A. M., and the orchestra concert at 9 P. M. After the last-named event, we walk around awhile, and then go to bed.... There are two amateurs on board who are returning from a hunting trip, and on the aft deck they have a number of trophies. A majority of the male passengers live in Africa, and have hunted a great deal, so the two amateurs do not attract much attention. Leopards are the great pest of the country, as they are very numerous. One man told me this morning that only a few weeks ago, a leopard killed a negro boy in his hunting camp. No hunting story is more than half true, so I do not pay much attention to them. A hunter offered me a pair of buffalo horns today, but I refused the offer; they were not worth the trouble of carrying them home.... Captain Ulrich, of the “Burgermeister,” does not sit at the head of the centre table in the dining-room, but occupies a side seat at a side table.... Men object to wearing evening clothes because of the stiff shirt. Soft shirts with pleated fronts are generally worn with dress suits on the “Burgermeister,” and they are said to be the latest in London. A coat and vest of white duck, the coat as short as a waiter’s jacket, are also substituted for the black coat and vest.... Every little while I meet a man who says he prefers second-class to first class on a ship, because of the lack of formality in the second-cabin. At Victoria Falls I became acquainted with a man, and saw him again today on the second-cabin deck. He says the informality there is so pronounced that some of the Englishmen spend half the morning in the smoking-room wearing nothing but pajamas. That, it seems to me, is carrying informality too far. When a man travels in the second-cabin, he does it to save money, and not because it is “more democratic.” I hate democracy when it amounts to impoliteness and rudeness, as is frequently the case.... There is a burly German officer on board in whom I am much interested, because of the scars on his head and face. The scars were evidently received in a student duel at the university, and I should like to see the bully boy who decorated him so artistically.... I hear it stated every hour of the day that Africa is a country of “great promise.” It seems to me that Africa has been “promising” long enough, and should cease being a game country. The United States turned the buffalo ranges into farms; Africa would also get rid of its game if there were any demand for its land from agriculturists.

SATURDAY, APRIL 19.—Today we are off Samoliland, the most worthless part of Africa. It is controlled by the Italians, and is about as savage as it ever was. There is one seaport in Samoliland, but steamers rarely touch there, as it has no business.... The weather, which we expected to be very hot in this part of the world, remains cool. You often miss it when you expect misfortune.... There is a young Canadian on board named Goult. It was at first reported that he was an American, and he does look like one, as all Canadians do. He and his wife have been on a hunting trip into the interior of Africa. They had an outfit consisting of one hundred and fifty native men, who packed their supplies and tents. The natives carried their own food, which consisted of several thousand pounds of corn-meal; in addition to this, they had meat when game was killed. The hunt lasted nearly four months, and very few of the men deserted. When a native porter deserts, he loses all pay coming to him; besides, he is liable to arrest and imprisonment. Mr. Goult had a professional guide and hunter with him, who organized and managed his outfit. They killed four lions, but no elephants, although other game was fairly plentiful. Mr. Goult says game animals in this section are infested with a tick which renders them disgusting at times. Mrs. Goult told me this evening that she suffered no hardship; that roughing it in Canada is very much rougher.... The band on the “Burgermeister” is a very good one; much better than is usually found on ships, and the leader has excellent taste in choosing his selections. And this man is a waiter in the dining-room, and young and good-looking.... The “Burgermeister” is a slow ship, and makes about fifteen miles an hour: only half as much as some of the big liners on the Atlantic. The Atlantic is the dandy of oceans: no other has equally fine ships. But on the fast ships of the Atlantic there is a vibration from the engines that is disagreeable. The slow ships are much more comfortable than the fast ones. And the Atlantic is also the bully of oceans; a voyage without rough weather is rare. If the Atlantic were as smooth as the Indian ocean from Beira to Aden, people would hear less of seasickness.... The captain is taking home with him a baby deer that certainly does not weigh a pound and a half. It is not as big as a rabbit, as it belongs to a family of deer noted for diminutive size. The captain amused the passengers this evening by feeding his baby with a bottle. First the captain smelt of the bottle, to see that the milk was not sour. The baby has been ill, and the ship doctor has been attending to it.... By-the-way, the doctor has been behaving very well since his sweetheart left the boat at Tanga. The women expected him to be gay, but he has been very quiet and thoughtful, and the men are proud of him.... There is nothing lazier or duller than a voyage in quiet seas. At one time this afternoon, every passenger on my side of the deck was asleep.

SUNDAY, APRIL 20.—We were awakened this morning by the ship’s band playing hymns in the halls. Soon after I went on deck, land appeared, the first we have seen in four days, and we remained in sight of it all day. Between us and land a ship was steaming southward, and a school of porpoises also appeared, disturbing the sea for miles. They were as lazy as the natives, and jumped in a leisurely, slow way that amused us. About noon, Cape Guardafui appeared. Guardafui is the most eastern extremity of the African continent, and when we rounded it about noon, we were in the Arabian sea, and the ship’s prow was pointing toward home: due west. The rocky point around which we turned to enter the Arabian Sea, bears a striking resemblance to a huge crouching lion, when viewed from a distance. We passed quite near the shore, but saw no signs of life: nothing but a desolate waste of sand and rock.... After rounding Guardafui, we were in the Gulf of Aden, which looks small on the map, but we shall steam on its surface thirty hours, out of sight of land, before reaching Aden and the entrance to the Red Sea. We are now in that section referred to by Kipling as “East of Suez:” land of poor crops, poverty and misery. A few days’ sail to the east from Guardafui, and the traveler reaches India, where ignorance is worshipped as mystery, and where men of the tenth or hundredth generation know no more than did their fathers.... Africa is larger than North America; it is almost as large as the American continent, and is controlled by such enlightened natives as England, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium and Portugal, yet from one end of the country to the other there is no such thing as a public school for the natives. Indeed, I have heard many Englishmen openly declare that education is the ruination of the native. I don’t dispute the statement; I only call attention to two different ideas of the importance of education. In the Philippine Islands, in Guam, in Porto Rico, in Honolulu, in Cuba, we are insisting upon education as the solution of the native problem; over here, the powers insist that education only makes the native problem worse. At home, we are called upon to contribute money with which to send missionaries to the heathen. Over here, where the heathen lives, the whites almost universally say that the missionary causes useless trouble. I am not trying to settle the question, or argue it: I am merely calling attention to a queer phase of it.... A gentleman told me today that in Portuguese East Africa, where he lives, there is a Catholic mission in charge of French priests. In the chapel, there are huge oil paintings showing pictures of hell. The devil is represented as a negro. In one picture, a native is dying, and hundreds of fiends surround his bed, waiting until life is extinct, that they may torture him. There is education of this sort in Africa, but no school-house for the natives.... Religious services were held in the dining-room at five o’clock this afternoon, conducted by a German. The full band was used instead of an organ; the preacher would line a hymn, and then those present would sing it, accompanied by the band.... The ship’s library contains books printed in German, English, French, Portuguese, and Dutch, which will give you an idea of the different nationalities patronizing this line.

MONDAY, APRIL 21.—At 9 o’clock this evening we came to Aden, in Arabia, said to be the hottest town in the world. Every drop of water used there is condensed from the sea, although there is a white population of two thousand, including English soldiers, and an Arab population of forty thousand. There is a tradition that rain fell at Aden three years ago, and that every roof in town leaked, but previous to that time no rain had fallen in the town or its vicinity for many years; many of its elderly citizens had never seen a rain-storm, and looked with wonder upon the one which fell three years ago. Aden is located on a rock seventeen hundred feet high, and this rock may be seen far out at sea. The town is an important coaling station, and the English have tremendous fortifications—almost equal to Gibraltar—in the rocks. The harbor is a large one, and almost land-locked, and we thought the place a very pretty one, by moonlight. Although Aden has such a bad reputation for hot weather, the evening was delightfully cool. We were not permitted to land, owing to the plague, but our ship was promptly surrounded by Arabs in boats, who bartered with the passengers until after midnight. The Arabs had ostrich feathers, cigarettes, post-cards, and dozens of other articles to sell, and these they sent up the ship’s side in baskets, for the inspection of the passengers. If the passengers were interested in the goods offered, they asked the price, said it was too much, and offered half; then the dealer became excited, and screamed back that he wouldn’t take it, although he often did. There were dozens of these boats, and the uproar was so incessant that sleep was impossible. The ostrich feathers offered were poor, and those who bought, even at greatly reduced prices, were probably worsted.... The old town of Aden dates back to the days of Tyre and Sidon, and was a celebrated commercial centre long before our Christian era; for many centuries it has been a fortified town because of its strategetical position. From the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries it did an enormous trade with China, India and Egypt, and its market was the clearing-house of that day for the treasures of the East. For tens of centuries, Aden has been the cockpit of fierce fights for ascendency amongst the Arabs, Abyssinians, Persians, Turks, and Egyptians.... A gentleman who lives at Aden says he pays $20 a month for water, which is delivered at his door in tank-wagons drawn by camels. Some of the numerous shops in Aden sell nothing but condensed and bottled water, and the price in quantity is usually a dollar per hundred gallons.... Many years ago, great tanks were built at Aden, to catch the precious rainfall, but these have not been in use for many years, although tourists usually visit them.... Aden is a great camel market, and much of the famous Mocha coffee is shipped from this point. There is just one industry in the town: the manufacture of cigarettes, which is in the hands of Greeks, and who bring their tobacco duty-free from Turkey and Egypt. The walls of the houses are built of a cheap concrete, and plastered.... A third-class passenger on the “Burgermeister” is a little German girl, five years old, traveling alone. She was brought on board at Dar-es-Salaam, to be taken back to Germany. Her mother died three days before, and her father was somewhere in the interior, trying to make a fortune. The little girl’s mother arrived in Dar-es-Salaam only a week before her death. Now the child is very ill, and it is not believed she will live to reach her friends in Germany. The women passengers are doing all they can for the child, but she cries almost constantly for her mother, and not much can be done for her.

TUESDAY, APRIL 22.—This morning at 11 o’clock we entered the Red Sea, through the Straits of Bab el Mandeb. The straits are about ten miles wide, and are made narrower at the entrance to the Red Sea by Perim Island, which the English have fortified. On our right, Asia; on the left, Africa,—two continents in sight. The Red Sea is a great highway for ships since the completion of the Suez Canal; ships for India, China, Japan, Ceylon, Australia and Africa now pass this way. From 7 o’clock this morning until 3 P. M. we passed fourteen ships: six were in sight at one time. Most of them passed us so closely that we could read their names.... All over the world, you hear how terribly hot and disagreeable a passage through the Red Sea is. I have been through it twice, and both voyages were cool and pleasant. Ask anyone who has been through the Red Sea, and he will tell you he had a pleasant voyage, but those who have not made the trip, say it is dreadful. If you have a head-wind, they say, the voyage is endurable, but if you have a following wind,—well, passengers can’t stand it, and beg the captain to run the other way for a time, and give them some relief. We have a following wind today,—that is, the smoke from our funnels is ahead of us,—but we find the weather more agreeable than it was at Beira, or other points on the east coast of Africa.... We are rarely out of sight of land, and this afternoon we passed the Arabian town of Mokka. We spell it Mocha, and famous coffee comes from its vicinity. Mocha coffee is like the Blue Point oyster; it is very rare, and there are many imitations. The town of Mocha has no harbor, and ships rarely call there, so the little coffee it produces is sent to Aden. Further up the coast is the town of Jiddah. It is from this place that pilgrims start for Mecca, sacred city of the Mohammedans. Only one white man has ever visited Mecca, as white people are not allowed in the place. This man, an English officer named Burton, disguised himself as an Arab physician. He spent several years in familiarizing himself with the Mohammedan religion and the Arab language. After his preparations were complete, he shipped as a deck passenger at Suez and successfully deceived the dozens of real Arabs and Mohammedans with whom he was intimately associated. The pilgrims to Mecca from Jiddah are cruelly robbed by the Arabs through whose country they must pass, and the party Burton traveled with had one pitched battle with the thieves. Burton wrote a book telling of his experiences, and I know of nothing more interesting in the way of adventure. A railroad is now being built to Mecca, if it has not been actually completed, and Jiddah will lose much of its former importance. War and slavery are common in most of the Arab towns along the Red Sea, and it is dangerous for ships to send parties ashore, unless heavily armed. During the hot, dry season, many of these towns are entirely deserted; the inhabitants go into the mountains, and remain there until the weather becomes endurable. The Red Sea has a shore-line of more than three thousand miles, yet the country surrounding it is so worthless that there is almost no town of importance on its shores, and no river runs into it. There is no rain in the vicinity of the Red Sea, and it loses eight feet every year from evaporation, which must be made up from other seas where there is more rain and less heat.... You hear a great deal of the “Mysticism of the East.” This mysticism is as foolish as the doggerel used by children when they count the buttons on your coat: “Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor lawyer, merchant chief,” etc. Mysticism never means anything. The West solves riddles, and discovers how to produce a hundred bushels of corn per acre: the East pays great attention to Mysticism, and has more poor, dirty and ignorant people than any other part of the world. When the plague breaks out in the East, as a result of foolish pilgrimages to Mecca or Benares, the pilgrims say the plague is a part of the Mysticism of the East, and continue to drink holy and dirty water. But the men of the West have a better doctrine: its chief tenet is, “Clean Up,” and the plague disappears before it.... All our deck passengers left us at Aden. Men who spend half their time saying their prayers do not flourish in the great world west of Suez.... The passengers spend a good deal of their time in reading. I often hear them talking of the books they are reading. “How do you like it?” one will ask. “Oh,” the other will reply, “it serves to kill time, but is rather foolish.” What queer things you find in books! And how much alike many of the famous ones are. “Adam Bede,” “The Manxman,” and “The Scarlet Letter,” were all written around an “idea” that is unnatural, unclean and absurd.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 23.—We are in a wider part of the Red Sea today, and are not meeting so many ships; the few we have seen have been far away. Yesterday we were in a part of the sea almost as narrow as a river, and we could not avoid meeting all passing vessels. At one time last night so many brilliantly lighted ships were in sight that we were reminded of a night parade of electrical features at a celebration.... We have had a strong head-wind all day which travelers pray for in the Red Sea, and toward evening the “Burgermeister” acquired considerable motion.... The English passengers on board organized a Sports Committee this morning, and are now busily engaged in arranging for such elevating sports as “In a Pig’s Eye,” “Are You There?” potato-races for women, etc. The traveling Englishman has lately gone crazy about ship sports; he is like a Methodist who believes in sanctification by baptism: he will talk of nothing else, and insists on arguing the question with you. In England, only cheap people at country fairs engage in such sports, but on English ships, dukes and princes are expected to take part, for the honor of Old England. The German passengers are not enlisting for the sports, but the English urge them to take part to the point of annoyance.... I have heard none of the passengers mention the fact that the water in the Red Sea is not red; the fact that the water in the Red Sea is blue, now seems to be generally known.... A passenger in the third-class is very ill, and the ship doctor, and a German military doctor who volunteered his services, decided that the man has malaria of the head. Malaria is so common in the tropics that now they have it in the head.... A peculiar thing about the “Burgermeister” is that several of the gentlemen passengers wear white socks. Somewhere on this trip I met a man who was irritable because his white socks attracted attention. He should be on the “Burgermeister,” where they are quite common.... I heard a woman make a remarkable statement last night. She said: “I have been traveling four months, and have not seen a single married man attempt to flirt; all the flirting I have seen has been done by married women with young men.” I submit the statement as unusual, without comment.... The dance last night was a failure; the orchestra played several numbers which did not attract any dancers at all, and only five couples danced during the entire evening. All the women dancers were married, and their husbands sat around and frowned at the young fellows who were dancing with them. There is nothing in the notion that husbands want their wives to be very popular with other men.... During the concert this evening, the tall negro man nurse who has whiskers, appeared with a bottle of milk, and submitted it to the inspection of his employer. The woman smelt and then tasted the milk; it seemed satisfactory, for she gave it back to the tall Kaffir, and he disappeared, probably to feed his charge.

THURSDAY, APRIL 24.—I awoke early this morning because of a strange and unusual sensation. I feared I might be catching the fever, or plague, but later discovered I was cold. A chilly head-wind was blowing, and this in the Red Sea, which rumor says is as hot as a furnace! The passengers went about wearing overcoats all day. At 2:30 P. M. we passed out of the tropics.... For two days we have been in that part of the Red Sea which is two hundred miles wide, and have not seen many ships; but tonight we were in a narrow part, and four ships were in sight at one time. All of them were small; there are many ships in the east, but no very big ones. If one of the big ships of the Atlantic should appear at Bombay or Colombo, people would travel hundreds of miles to see it.... The general impression in America is that an English lord is an effeminate little man who only knows enough to carry an eyeglass in one eye. As a matter of fact, some of them seem to be quite useful and manly. Lord Delamere is one of the conspicuous figures in the development of British East Africa, and has done much for that country. In addition, he is the world’s greatest lion-hunter. Up to 1911, he had killed seventy lions, single-handed. Of the first forty-nine he shot, not one escaped. No other lion-hunter has a record half as good as Lord Delamere.

Ricksha Boy, South Africa

Car to Kimberley Diamond Mines

Bullock Teams, Victoria Falls

Transport Wagons, Rhodesia]

Another useful man in Africa is Lord Carnworth, who is an extensive farmer, as is Lord Delamere. Both these men engage in expensive agricultural experiments for the general good. Lord Carnworth lately wrote a book entitled, “A Colony in the Making.” It displays a wonderful knowledge of British East Africa. Among other things, he says the American hunters who come here are game hogs, and places Mr. Roosevelt in that class. He also speaks jestingly of the dangers of hunting in Africa. The terrible rhino, which in books is never content unless he has a hunter impaled on his single terrible horn, is not thought to be dangerous by hunters who live in this country.... In his book, Lord Carnworth discusses the native labor question quite frankly. He says what practically all the whites here say: that the missionaries are doing no good—that their converts are worse than the unconverted negroes. I quote his exact language:

“Inevitably but unfortunately the mission-educated native does not bear a good name, either among his fellow natives or among Europeans. It is, alas, a very generally accepted fact that one should beware of mission servants, who almost invariably lie, drink and steal.”

Speaking of Roosevelt reminds me that in German East Africa I saw his hunting book, translated into German, on sale at the bookstores. Everyone knows of him, and around Mombasa all the natives say with pride that they saw him. There are dozens of big-game hunters on this boat; most of them know men who were with Roosevelt, and one of them was in Roosevelt’s party for a time. They all say Roosevelt was very popular in Africa, but that Kermit, his son, was cordially despised. Roosevelt himself, they say, is a thorough sportsman, and a man of undoubted courage. He is not considered a particularly good shot, but they say he is the luckiest hunter who ever handled a gun. Besides, everything was specially arranged for his hunt. Not only all the white residents, but all the native chiefs, did what they could to locate game for him; he did not have the trouble of the usual hunter. It is further said over here that Roosevelt was a great talker, and that he would quit hunting any time to tell about his well-known theories for bettering humanity.... It is also agreed that hunters are very unpopular among the actual residents of Africa; not that the residents object to the game being killed, but every hunter requires a large number of natives for his outfit, and these are drawn mainly from the farms, where labor is scarce, and badly needed. There are millions of native men able to work, but most of them won’t work. In the native settlements, the hard labor is mainly performed by the women, children, and old men; the stalwart fellows who would do the work in a civilized community, strut about covered with grease, looking for fights with other tribes. The whites say these idlers should be made to work; that it is better that they work for a shilling a day than spend their time in idleness and mischief, and I would not be surprised to hear that the British have adopted a Vagrancy Act to reach the loafers.

FRIDAY, APRIL 25.—One of the passengers plays the piano a good deal, and plays it well, and I have just learned that he is a noted lion-hunter. That is the funniest combination I have ever heard of; a piano-player who is a lion-hunter.... There is on board a captain in the British army, and a captain in the German army. You would think they would affiliate, but they do not; on the contrary, they glare at each other. The German captain wears his uniform a good deal, and as the British captain does not, I am satisfied that he thinks the German is lacking in taste.... Among the passengers are two elderly men married to young wives; Germans who occupy official positions of some kind in German East Africa. They are the most loving couples on board; the old husbands always have their arms about their wives when on deck. If there is any one thing particularly fitted for privacy, it is love. I think the old gentlemen believe that the other passengers talk about them—and they do—and want to show them that their young wives are satisfied.... We have been having Sports today, the English gentlemen having had their way.... Every little while two men dash by with their legs tied together. They are practicing for the three-legged race, and have already run over two babies and one negro boy nurse. In the Ladies’ Potato Race, two women fell headlong, and the exhibition of dry goods was as indelicate as that seen in a dry-goods window to show new spring underwear. There is something wrong with every woman’s figure, and a potato-race brings out the irregularities.

SATURDAY, APRIL 26.—We reached Suez at 1:30 this afternoon, after a chilly ride through the narrow end of the Red Sea, which is known as the Gulf of Suez. All morning, land was in sight on both sides, and lighthouses on lonely islands were frequent. At 3 o’clock this morning we passed Mount Sinai. I have asked about half the passengers what happened on Mount Sinai to make it famous, and they don’t know.... Three hours before reaching Suez we saw a steamship that had gone ashore during the night. Another vessel was assisting it, and we did not stop.... We had a long wait at Suez before being admitted to the canal. The port doctor, a woman, amused us by coming on board, and marshaling us in the music-room for inspection. As our names were called, we walked past the doctor, and she looked at us in a manner intended to be searching. I was called out as “Herr Howe,” while Adelaide answered to “Fraulein Howe.”... We had a scheme to go to Cairo by special train from Suez, and rejoin the ship at Port Said, but the authorities would not let us land, owing to our taking on a dozen or more Arab firemen at Aden, where there is plague. But dozens of Egyptians surrounded the ship, in little boats, and offered us all sorts of articles, which they sent up for our inspection in baskets. One ship went into the canal ahead of us, having been waiting longer, and a dozen or more boats came out carrying mud from the canal dredgers. Finally a launch appeared, bringing the long-expected pilot, and at 5:30 P. M. we steamed slowly into the canal, passing within a few hundred feet of the main streets of Suez. In an hour, we passed two freight steamers, and they gave us right of way, as ours is a mail-boat.... The Suez Canal, as everyone knows, runs through the Egyptian desert, and the desolation on the Arabian side interested me greatly. The canal requires so many workmen that it is fringed with residences of one sort and another; some are boat-houses, some are huts, and some are sightly stations. And every quarter of a mile there seems to be a dredge, to keep the channel the required depth. Every foot of the canal, on both sides, is being lined with stone, and for this work a great many Egyptian laborers are required.... On the Egyptian side there is a fresh-water canal, supplied from the Nile, and this is used to irrigate a considerable stretch of country. With a glass, we could see a good many typical Egyptian farm-houses, and Egyptian agricultural life in various stages; but on the Arabian side, there was the lonely desert you have seen in pictures and read about. At one place we saw a caravan of camels in camp for the night: the drivers in one group, and the camels in another. At another place we saw a jackal among the little hills composed of dirt from the canal. The animal was gaunt and ugly, and looked at the ship indifferently. There was a great deal to see, but the sun was declining rapidly, and at 7:30, when we left the deck and went down to dinner, we could see nothing fifty feet beyond the lighted decks.... There was to be a dance after dinner, beginning at 9 o’clock, but the night was cold, and before that hour the travelers from Kansas went to bed; just as the ship entered one of the lakes which form thirty miles of the canal. In this lake we steamed at full speed, whereas in the canal proper we had been running at five miles an hour. At Suez, we took on a special lighting apparatus; not a headlight, but a searchlight. This was attached to our prow, and lighted our way.... The engineer of the “Burgermeister,” a fat German we all admire, sat on deck while we were passing through the canal, reading a newspaper. I asked him how often he had been through, and he guessed that he had made the trip seventy times. His ship makes four trips a year around Africa.

SUNDAY, APRIL 27.—When I went on deck at 5:30 this morning, the sun was just peeping out of the Mediterranean, and Port Said was in sight. I was the only passenger on deck, and although I expected Adelaide every moment, she did not appear until we were tied up in Port Said, an hour and a half later; the Suez Canal greatly excited me, although I had been through it before, but it did not greatly excite Adelaide. Half a dozen Arab sailboats, loaded with coal, passed in the canal; they had the peculiar sails seen on boats on the Nile, and were so old that I wondered they did not fall to pieces. On the larger boats were three men, and two on the smaller ones. The masts were very tall, and in this flat country the sails catch enough wind to push the boats along.... When Adelaide appeared at 7:30, I proposed that we go ashore before breakfast. She agreed to the proposition, and we were walking the streets of Port Said ten minutes later, as the ship was tied up within a hundred feet of the principal street.... Port Said is said to be a very high-priced and dishonest town, but the boatman charged only six cents each to take us to land, and the price of a carriage is only fifty cents an hour. We engaged a guide, because one followed us, and began explaining things, and we could not get rid of him. Besides, he said his price was only a shilling an hour. In no other town we have visited have we found prices as low as in Port Said, which has a worse reputation than any other town in the world. Port Said has regulations for the protection of visitors, and enforces them. When you go ashore, you do not pay the boatman, who may charge you any price he sees fit, but you pay an official at the landing. Get rid of the notion printed everywhere that Port Said is “tough.” In addition to being an orderly place, it is very interesting. Sunday is not observed in the town, for two reasons: 1. Ships arrive and send passengers ashore nearly every hour of every day, and these want supplies on Sunday the same as on other days; 2. The sixty thousand inhabitants are mainly Mohammedans, and they have no Sunday.... There were several other ships in the harbor, and the streets were crowded at 8 A. M. In front of one café, an orchestra of fifteen men and women was playing, and playing well. Most of the shops are devoted to tourist trade, but we visited an Arab market instead of the curio stores. The older portion of Port Said is as purely Egyptian as Cairo, and as dirty and oriental. The streets are narrow, and the houses high, and the native shops are as interesting as they are anywhere. Our guide was an Arab, and took us to his church: a Mohammedan mosque, which we could not enter without putting coverings on our feet. Everywhere we heard exploding fire-crackers; today is some sort of Mohammedan festival.... We received a lot of mail from home; the first in more than four months. After getting our mail, we lost interest in Port Said, and went back to the ship to read our letters. We found these so interesting that at 10:30, when the “Burgermeister” left for Naples, we barely glanced at the famous statue to Ferdinand de Lesseps which adorns the entrance to the canal.

MONDAY, APRIL 28.—We are approaching the Blessed Country of Bad Weather again. This morning the sky is as threatening as it is on the morning when you give a picnic, and when you wish it would do one thing or the other. No country can amount to much without bad weather: the trouble with Africa and Arizona is too much fine weather.... The Mediterranean, which we all dreaded, was as smooth last night as a millpond, and shows no disposition today to change its pacific character.... The first thing you think of, on boarding a ship, is that funny people travel. We meet a few nice, normal, sane people, but most of them are freaks. On every ship we meet the foolish son of a rich man, who is allowed to travel to keep him away from home. The woman traveler is nearly always peculiar; she is usually an old widow with money, and as ugly as she is cranky. There is a professional traveler always met with who has no sense, and very little politeness, but he has been everywhere. It is a mistake to imagine that only rich and agreeable people are met in traveling. The best people remain at home; we have met neither dukes nor princesses on the trip, and very few we remember from one ship to another.... There is a kind of traveler who annoys you by his looks. A man of this type came on board at Port Said. He is a faded-out old rat with gold teeth, very thin and sandy hair, and a waxed moustache. He is quite impatient because he has not created a flutter on board, since it is plain to be seen that he has traveled a great deal; he is not content to wait a few days, until news of his exploits gets about easily and naturally.... Another man came on board at Port Said who is accompanied by a wife and three daughters. The ship is crowded, and this man, who is paying five fares, sleeps on the floor! People are that foolish about traveling. People generally are as crazy and disagreeable about traveling as the English are about Sports.... The women have great respect for the bishop of their church, but they have greater respect for a woman traveling with a maid. Every woman believes she is entitled to a maid. There is a woman on board who has one. The other women say she is the slouchiest dressed person on the ship. You may say that is envy, but it isn’t: it’s the truth.... When you buy anything, pay for it in cash. It is so easy to sign a check, or have it charged. When the passengers buy wines, they sign their names to a slip of paper, and settle once a week. One of the amusing things on board is to see the men studying their bar bills. Every passenger thinks he has been robbed, but his signature confronts him for every item, and he cannot get a fair start at indignation.... The New York banker, Mr. Hepburn, mentioned elsewhere as returning from a hunt, does not have much confidence in the future of Africa. It has too many pests and too much dry weather, he says. Besides, much of the country is volcanic, and the soil a thin vegetable and leaf mold. Mr. Hepburn says that while hunting, one of his guides was an Englishman who was once a member of parliament, with an income of $60,000 a year. But he went the pace, and spent his money, and is now a guide in Africa at $5 a day. Another guide in the Hepburn party was a man named Cunningham, who was attached to the Roosevelt expedition. Cunningham is a very noted man, and receives $400 a month for his services. Although Mr. Hepburn is a New York banker, a former comptroller of the currency, and noted big-game hunter, it is so dull on board that he spends a good deal of his time teaching Adelaide card tricks. He is an elderly man, and so modest and polite that we regard him as a credit to his country.... A party of eight came on board at Port Said, and I am glad they are not Americans. They are English or Colonials, and have taken the ship. They are very superior in three particulars: 1. They went to Port Said two weeks ago in the “Tabora,” a larger and newer ship than the “Burgermeister;” 2. They were in Cairo four days; 3. They have been in Palestine. They sit together in the dining-room, and every other word they use is “Tabora,” a leviathan of 8,000 tons. These people are going to London, and this is their first trip. There are three girls in the party, all of them in love with one sweet young man, and they hold his hand on deck. The other passengers look at them in astonishment, if not disgust. Americans are said to be “loud.” I don’t believe they are half as bad as they are reported to be. A German ship captain once said to me: “The Americans are, as a rule, our best behaved passengers, followed by the Germans. The worst behaved are the English.”... In the traveling I have done, I have seen few “loud” Americans, but I have seen many “loud” English. And it is the English who criticise us most.

Native Workmen, Kimberley Diamond Mine

Traveling by Machillas on the Zambesi

Native Village in German East Africa

Khami Ancient Ruins]

TUESDAY, APRIL 29.—We have seen no land since leaving Port Said, except that we passed the island of Crete. Some say we passed it last evening, and some say we passed it this morning: it has been pointed out to me twice, and both sights of it were very hazy.... Ships are not seen as frequently in the Mediterranean as in the Red Sea; we have seen but one steamship in two days—a big P. & O. liner en route to India. On the Red Sea, a half-dozen were frequently in sight at one time. The explanation is that the Mediterranean is wide, and ships keep a considerable distance from each other, whereas the Red Sea is often almost as narrow as a river.... There are two women on board from Johannesburg, but they did not know each other there; indeed, they had never heard of each other before coming on board. Each says of the other: “I cannot imagine who she can be.”... When a German leaves the ship’s table, he bows very politely to those passengers remaining. I believe this very pretty custom is confined entirely to the Germans.... The barkeeper has been humiliated, and relieved from duty; I don’t know what his offense was, but I hear he is charged with becoming impatient while on duty. The Germans say that when a man is employed to serve the public, impatience is a gross offense, and I agree with them. For a day or two, the barkeeper did nothing, and was the most contrite and penitent human being I have ever seen, but this morning he appeared as a waiter in the dining-room, and is trying hard to regain the favor of the chief steward.... There are many foolish things for men to do, but probably the most foolish is to buy champagne. Every day at dinner I see dozens of men pay three or four dollars for a bottle of champagne, simply to “act smart.” Boys are not the only ones who “act smart” in company, and force their parents to whip them.... The passenger who has his wife and three daughters with him attracts a great deal of attention from the men. His women-folks have four pieces of fancy work under way all the time; think of that man’s dry-goods bills! And I cannot sleep at night from thinking what his laundry bill must be. There is a laundry on board, operated by Chinese, who do excellent work, but their prices are something to talk about. I sent out a little dab of washing the other day, and the bill was $6. I pay for waists for only one woman, whereas that other man must pay for waists for four. It should be against the law for any man to take care of four women.... The New York banker who is returning from a hunting trip in Africa, is a director in the Texas company, which is trying to become as great a robber as the Standard Oil Co. He told me today that a few months ago his company let a contract to an American firm for an additional tank steamer, at $590,000. A foreign builder offered to build exactly the same ship for $380,000. The Texas company was compelled to pay forty per cent additional because of our policy of protection. What becomes of that additional $210,000? Does it go to American labor?... Most of it, probably. When you pay high prices for meat, the farmer is being benefited; when the Texas company pays a high price for a ship, the workmen who fashion the ship, and mine the steel that goes into it, are benefited. Taxes, however collected, mean a burden to the consumer. When you pay twenty cents for an article which formerly cost ten cents, three cents of the excess goes to the workman, and seven cents of the excess is charged by the American politician for cost of collection. It is the workers who pay taxes and the tremendous cost of collection.... I have frequently spoken in these notes of hearing the English everywhere compliment America. The notion that foreigners sneer at us, is a mistaken one. In the London _Telegraph_, a copy of which I picked up today, I read a page reference to the death of J. Pierpont Morgan.

“The field of the American financier,” the article said, “is a country sixty times the area of England, the most richly endowed territory in the world, inhabited by ninety millions of the most energetic wealth-producers on the face of the globe.”