These last are simply awful. Just
below the Consulate is the beach, or rather a mud bank that is
called a beach. It is left quite bare at low tide, and serves
as a repository for all the filth, offal, and refuse of the town.
Here it is, too, that the women come to bury coconuts in the
mud, leaving them there till the outer husk is quite rotten,
when they dig them up again and use the fibres to make mats with,
and for various other purposes. As this process has been going
on for generations, the condition of the shore can be better
imagined than described. I have smelt many evil odours in the
course of my life, but the concentrated essence of stench which
arose from that beach at Lamu as we sat in the moonlit night
-- not under, but _on_ our friend the Consul's hospitable roof
-- and sniffed it, makes the remembrance of them very poor and
faint. No wonder people get fever at Lamu. And yet the place
was not without a certain quaintness and charm of its own, though
possibly -- indeed probably -- it was one which would quickly
pall.
'Well, where are you gentlemen steering for?' asked our friend
the hospitable Consul, as we smoked our pipes after dinner.
'We propose to go to Mt Kenia and then on to Mt Lekakisera,'
answered Sir Henry.
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