In due course we left Lamu, and ten days afterwards we found
ourselves at a spot called Charra, on the Tana River, having
gone through many adventures which need not be recorded here.
Amongst other things we visited a ruined city, of which there
are many on this coast, and which must once, to judge from their
extent and the numerous remains of mosques and stone houses,
have been very populous places. These ruined cities are immeasurably
ancient, having, I believe, been places of wealth and importance
as far back as the Old Testament times, when they were centres
of trade with India and elsewhere. But their glory has departed
now -- the slave trade has finished them -- and where wealthy
merchants from all parts of the then civilized world stood and
bargained in the crowded market-places, the lion holds his court
at night, and instead of the chattering of slaves and the eager
voices of the bidders, his awful note goes echoing down the ruined
corridors. At this particular place we discovered on a mound,
covered up with rank growth and rubbish, two of the most beautiful
stone doorways that it is possible to conceive. The carving
on them was simply exquisite, and I only regret that we had no
means of getting them away. No doubt they had once been the
entrances to a palace, of which, however, no traces were now
to be seen, though probably its ruins lay under the rising mound.

Gone! quite gone! the way that everything must go. Like the
nobles and the ladies who lived within their gates, these cities
have had their day, and now they are as Babylon and Nineveh,
and as London and Paris will one day be. Nothing may endure.
That is the inexorable law. Men and women, empires and cities,