The Kilima-Njaro Expedition by Harry Johnston

After a month's sojourn in Zanzibar, most agreeably spent as the recipient of Sir John Kirk's hospitality, all my arrangements for commencing my expedition to Kilima-njaro were completed. I had hired upwards of thirty porters, most of them old _employés_ of Mr. Stanley's on the Congo, and despatched them to Mombasa in an Arab dau, while I followed in the mail-steamer going north, accompanied by my personal servant, a Tamil boy from Ceylon. I took leave of Sir John Kirk with considerable regret one dark evening after an unusually agreeable dinner-party, and entered a little rowing-boat, which was to take me to the steamer, with a feeling of such downheartedness that my calmer reflections told me Zanzibar was likely to prove my African Capua. After my own experience I could realize now how previous explorers had been unnerved and unfitted for the rough life of the wilderness by the luxurious and easy-going life in Zanzibar. Fortunately the steamer I was journeying in to Mombasa was the same vessel which had brought me down to Aden, so that I once more found myself among friends. The night I left Sir John Kirk's was stiflingly hot, and the steamer was full of passengers-I shuddered at passing the night in a poky cabin with three other inmates. The captain saw my hesitation, and offered most kindly to rig up a cot for me on deck. I accepted his proposal eagerly, forgetting the danger in it, of which both of us were unaware. The steamer, according to custom, would remain all night in Zanzibar harbour, and leave at dawn. Now-and this is the only reason I record this incident-there is no surer way of getting a bad fever than to sleep in the open air in a tropical port. The reasons for this are many and would take up a great deal of time and space to describe properly; I therefore confine myself to the dogmatic assertion, which I here record in the interest of such of my readers as may be proceeding to the tropics, and are likely to be tempted to pass a quiet night in harbour on the cool upper deck instead of in their stuffy berths below. Sleep in the air as much as you like at open sea, but never when you are lying off shore in a port or land-locked bay. I paid the penalty of this one night's mistake in a very bad fever which attacked me soon after I landed at Mombasa, and left me horribly weak from its effects. Most fortunately, in my hour of extremity, I had fallen among friends. Captain Gissing, the Vice-Consul, was my host, and not only quartered me and my baggage in his Consulate, but also put up my thirty Zanzibar followers, an act of kindness for which I fear he was ill-rewarded by their noisy behaviour and continual squabbles with the populace of the town. So kind was Captain Gissing, that I was not made aware of this till after my recovery, and I beg to thank him again here for his considerate patience. The men were anything but bad fellows, but I suppose, finding themselves masterless with plenty to eat and nothing to do, they waxed riotous. In the meantime, the Rev. Mr. Handford, of the Church Missionary Society, who had brought me round in the crisis of my fever, carried me off to his station of Frere Town on the mainland (Mombasa is an island) to effect my convalescence, which, so pleasant was the nursing bestowed on me under his wife's kind care, would have been quietly enjoyable had I not continually worried myself about my arrested work. However, my friends were not idle while I lay in enforced inactivity, and the Revs. A. Downes Shaw, of Kisolutini, and Thomas Wakefield, of Jomvu, were both busily engaging porters for my caravan.

At length I was so far recovered as to resume my preparations for departure, and I once more repaired to Captain Gissing's house to pack my vast quantity of baggage into loads of a more or less uniform weight, averaging fifty pounds apiece.