Up and down wandered groups of various sorts of natives.  A month later we would have been able to identify their different tribes and to know more about them; but now we wondered at them, as strange and picturesque peoples.  They impressed us in general as being a fine lot of men, for they were of good physique, carried themselves well, and looked about them with a certain dignity and independence, a fine free pride of carriage and of step.  This fact alone differentiated them from our own negroes; but, further, their features were in general much finer, and their skins of a clear mahogany beautiful in its satiny texture.  Most—­and these were the blackest—­wore long white robes and fine openwork skull caps.  They were the local race, the Swahili, had we but known it; the original “Zanzibari” who furnished Livingstone, Stanley, Speke, and the other early explorers with their men.  Others, however, were much less “civilized.”  We saw one “Cook’s tour from the jungle” consisting of six savages, their hair twisted into innumerable points, their ear lobes stretched to hang fairly to their shoulders, wearing only a rather neglectful blanket, adorned with polished wire, carrying war clubs and bright spears.  They followed, with eyes and mouths open, a very sophisticated-looking city cousin in the usual white garments, swinging a jaunty, light bamboo cane.  The cane seems to be a distinguishing mark of the leisured class.  It not only means that you are not working, but also that you have no earthly desire to work.

About this time one of the hotel boys brought the inevitable chota-hazri—­the tea and biscuits of early morning.  For this once it was very welcome.

Our hotel proved to be on the direct line of freighting.  There are no horses or draught animals in Mombasa; the fly is too deadly.  Therefore all hauling is done by hand.  The tiny tracks of the unique street car system run everywhere any one would wish to go; branching off even into private grounds and to the very front doors of bungalows situated far out of town.  Each resident owns his own street car, just as elsewhere a man has his own carriage.  There are, of course, public cars also, each with its pair of boys to push it; and also a number of rather decrepit rickshaws.  As a natural corollary to the passenger traffic, the freighting also is handled by the blacks on large flat trucks with short guiding poles.  These men are quite naked save for a small loin cloth; are beautifully shaped; and glisten all over with perspiration shining in the sun.  So fine is the texture of their skins, the softness of their colour—­so rippling the play of muscles—­that this shining perspiration is like a beautiful polish.  They rush from behind, slowly and steadily, and patiently and unwaveringly, the most tremendous loads of the heaviest stuffs.  When the hill becomes too steep for them, they turn their backs against the truck; and by placing one foot behind the other, a few inches at a time, they edge their burden up the slope.