Cape Town, and one of its strangest ironies is in its ignoring all
the six thousand miles of coast line that lies between. Nowadays, in
winter time, the English, flying from the damp cold of London, go to
Cape Town as unconcernedly as to the Riviera. They travel in great
seagoing hotels, on which they play cricket, and dress for dinner.
Of the damp, fever-driven coast line past which, in splendid ease,
they are travelling, save for the tall peaks of Teneriffe and Cape
Verde, they know nothing.

When last Mrs. Davis and I made that voyage from Southampton, the
decks were crowded chiefly with those English whose faces are
familiar at the Savoy and the Ritz, and who, within an hour, had
settled down to seventeen days of uninterrupted bridge, with, before
them, the prospect on landing of the luxury of the Mount Nelson and
the hospitalities of Government House. When, the other day, we again
left Southampton, that former departure came back in strange
contrast. It emphasized that this time we are not accompanying
civilization on one of her flying leaps. Instead, now, we are going
down to the sea in ships with the vortrekkers of civilization, those
who are making the ways straight; who, in a few weeks, will be
leaving us to lose themselves in great forests, who clear the paths
of noisome jungles where the sun seldom penetrates, who sit in
sun-baked "factories," as they call their trading houses, measuring
life by steamer days, who preach the Gospel to the cannibals of the
Congo, whose voices are the voices of those calling in the
wilderness.

As our tender came alongside the _Bruxellesville_ at Southampton, we
saw at the winch Kroo boys of the Ivory Coast; leaning over the rail
the Soeurs Blanches of the Congo, robed, although the cold was
bitter and the decks black with soot-stained snow, all in white;
missionaries with long beards, a bishop in a purple biretta, and
innumerable Belgian officers shivering in their cloaks and wearing
the blue ribbon and silver star that tells of three years of service
along the Equator. This time our fellow passengers are no
pleasure-seekers, no Cook's tourists sailing south to avoid a
rigorous winter. They have squeezed the last minute out of their
leave, and they are going back to the station, to the factory, to
the mission, to the barracks. They call themselves "Coasters," and
they inhabit a world all to themselves. In square miles, it is a
very big world, but it is one of those places ci