IN MOMBASA run on a track about two feet in width, and each car is pushed from behind by one or more bare-legged and bare¬ headed men who run as they shove it up hill and down. There are such car tracks all over the island, with switches to the homes of the various officials. There are private cars as well as public ones, and everyone who is anybody has his own private car with his coolies to push him to and from work. At the beginning and closing of his office hours, which here are from eight until twelve and from two until four, the tracks are filled with these little cars, each having one or more officials riding in state to or from the government buildings.

I wish I could show you this old town of Mombasa. It began before Columbus discovered America, and the citi¬ zens can show you the very spot where Vasco da Gama landed when he came here from India shortly after he discovered the new route to Asia by the Cape of Good Hope. He landed here in 1498 at just about the time that Columbus was making his third voyage to America. Even then Mombasa was a city and Da Gama describes it. A little later it became the property of the Portuguese. The most prominent building in the town is the great red Fort of Jesus, built by the Portuguese in 1593, when the city was made the capital of their East African possessions.

It was later the scene of massacres and bloody fights be¬ tween Portuguese and Arabs. To-day the red flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar flies over the old fort, now used as a prison, admission to which is forbidden.

After the Portuguese were driven out the Arabs held Mombasa for many years, and it was an Arab ruler, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who owned it when the British came in. It still belongs to him in a nominal way. He has 239