stocky little black men carry officialdom gratis, and the rest of the
world and his wife according to tariff; all those things are the
alphabet of Mombasa's charm. Arranged, and rearranged --by chance, by
individual perspective, and by point of view--they spell fascination,
attractiveness, glamour, mystery. And no acquaintance with Mombasa,
however intimate or old, dispels the charm to the man not guilty of
cynicism. To the cynic (and for him) there are sin--as Africa alone
knows how to sin--disease, of the dread zymotic types--and death; death
peering through the doors of godowns, where the ivory tusks are piled;
death in the dark back-streets of the bazaar, where tired policemen
wage lop-sided warfare against insanitary habits and a quite
impracticable legal code; death on the beach, where cannibal crabs
parade in thousands and devour all helpless things; death in the scrub
(all green and beautiful) where the tiny streets leave off and snakes
claim heritage; death in the grim red desert beyond the coast-line,
where lean, hopeless jackals crack today men's dry bones left fifty
years ago by the slave caravans--marrowless bones long since stripped
clean by the ants. But we are not all cynics.

Last to be cynic or pessimist was Louis McGregor Abraham, proprietor of
the Imperial Hotel--Syrian by birth, Jew by creed, Englishman by
nationality, and admirer first, last and all the time of all things
prosperous and promising, except his rival, the Hotel Royal.

"You came to the right place," he assured us when the last hot porter
had dumped the last of our belongings on the porch, had ceased from
chattering to watch Fred's financial methods, had been paid double the
customary price, and had gone away grumbling (to laugh at us behind our
backs). "They'd have rooked you at the other hole--underfed you,
overcharged you, and filled you full of lies. I tell the truth to folk