Mombasa

Mombasa, or MOMBAS, a seaport and the headquarters of British East Africa (till 1895 of the I.B.E.A. Company), stands on a coral island 3 miles long by $2\backslash frac\{1\}\{2\}$ broad close to the coast, in $4^\backslash circ\; 4\text{'}$ S. lat., about 150 miles N. of Zanzibar. The shores of the island are rocky and abrupt, and the greater part of its surface is covered with dense bush. The town has the usual Arab characteristics of ruin and neglect. The only object of interest is an extensive fort, built in 1594 by the Portuguese, and restored by them in 1635. Mombasa was visited by Vasco da Gama in 1497; it was then a large and prosperous town (as it was when Ibn-Batúta was there in 1331), with a colony of Christians of St Thomas and Banyans from India. It was held by the Portuguese during the greater part of the period from 1505 to 1693, though not without frequent captures. The native chief put it under British protection in 1823; but, they soon abandoning it, it was seized by the sultan of Zanzibar, who in 1888 ceded it provisionally to the British East Africa Company. They were made definitive masters of the place two years later, when they also were put in possession of a vast tract of country, extending 400 miles along the coast, from the river Juba to the river Umba, and inland up to Victoria Nyanza, and beyond it to the frontiers of the Congo Free State—an area of probably 700,000 sq. m., more than six times the size of Great Britain and Ireland together. Gold, copper, plumbago, and iron ore, as well as india-rubber, exist in this region in considerable abundance. The company have connected Mombasa with Zanzibar by telegraph, and in 1890 commenced a railway inland to Victoria Nyanza, a distance of 600 miles. The harbour, one of the largest, safest, and healthiest on the east coast of Africa, was in 1890 made a British naval coaling station, and the headquarters of the fleet in that part of the world. There is a pier; and other harbour-works were begun in 1890. Pop. about 20,000, mostly Africans, with some Arabs and Banyans. On the mainland opposite is Frere Town, the see of the Anglican bishop of East Equatorial Africa.