'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.