"Haggard, H Rider- Allan Quatermain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haggard H. Rider)

supposed to have its home somewhere up in this direction, and
I have a mind to see if there is any truth in them. If you fellows
like to come, well and good; if not, I'll go alone.'

'I'm your man, though I don't believe in your white race,' said
Sir Henry Curtis, rising and placing his arm upon my shoulder.

'Ditto,' remarked Good. 'I'll go into training at once. By
all means let's go to Mt Kenia and the other place with an
unpronounceable name, and look for a white race that does not exist.
It's all one to me.'

'When do you propose to start?' asked Sir Henry.

'This day month,' I answered, 'by the British India steamboat;
and don't you be so certain that things have no existence because
you do not happen to have heard of them. Remember King Solomon's mines!'


Some fourteen weeks or so had passed since the date of this conversation,
and this history goes on its way in very different surroundings.

After much deliberation and inquiry we came to the conclusion
that our best starting-point for Mt Kenia would be from the neighbourhood
of the mouth of the Tana River, and not from Mombassa, a place
over 100 miles nearer Zanzibar. This conclusion we arrived at
from information given to us by a German trader whom we met upon
the steamer at Aden. I think that he was the dirtiest German
I ever knew; but he was a good fellow, and gave us a great deal
of valuable information. 'Lamu,' said he, 'you goes to Lamu
-- oh ze beautiful place!' and he turned up his fat face and
beamed with mild rapture. 'One year and a half I live there
and never change my shirt -- never at all.'

And so it came to pass that on arriving at the island we disembarked
with all our goods and chattels, and, not knowing where to go,
marched boldly up to the house of Her Majesty's Consul, where
we were most hospitably received.

Lamu is a very curious place, but the things which stand out
most clearly in my memory in connection with it are its exceeding
dirtiness and its smells. 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