Nairobi

“ These plains, like an American prairie, are free of timber; and as far as the eye can see, from 50 feet off the railway track—to the horizon, in fact,—from Makindu to Nairobi, over a hundred miles, the eye feasts on a sportsman's paradise.
We reached Nairobi 23 hours after leaving Mombasa, 327 miles separating the chief port and the capital. What a terrible mixture of blacks was congregated on the platform and about the railway station! They were as numerous and black as flies around a barrel of molasses on a hot day. We were certainly in Darkest Africa. The ricksha is the hack of Nairobi. ”

“ Lions may be heard roaring within a mile or so of town; and leopards occasionally at night come on the verandas of the outlying dwellings. Naked savages from the jungle untouched by civilization in even the minutest particular wander the streets unabashed.
It is this constantly recurring, sharply drawn contrast that gives Nairobi its piquant charm. As one sits on the broad hotel veranda a constantly varied pageant passes before him. A daintily dressed, fresh-faced Englishwoman bobs by in a smart rickshaw drawn by two uniformed runners ”

“ Motor cars spin about the streets. Food, clothes and living expenses are cheaper in Nairobi than in South Africa. Hotel accommodation was but $1.60 a day.
Coffee growing is a promising industry of that section of the Protectorate. A French mission is located a few miles from Nairobi, and the fathers, some fifteen years ago, experimented with the coffee bush. It proved a success, and several large plantations have since been established. An exorbitant price is asked for land in this district. ”

“ Nairobi is not a beautiful place, but it is new and busy, and the people who live there are working wonders in changing a bad location into what some day will be a pretty place. It is over five thousand feet high, healthy, and cold at night. Away off in the hills a mile or more from town is Government House, where the governor lives, and near by is the club and a new European hospital, looking out over a sweep of country that on clear days includes Kilima-Njaro, over a hundred miles to the southeast, and Mount Kenia, a hundred miles northeast.
You are still in civilization in Nairobi. ”

“ It was a tired hotel, conducted by a tired once-missionary person, just as Nairobi itself was a tired-looking township of small parallel roofs of unpainted corrugated iron, with one main street more than a mile long and perhaps a dozen side-streets varying in length from fifty feet to half a mile.
He must have been a very tired surveyor who pitched on that site and marked it as railway headquarters on his map. He could have gone on and found within five miles two or three sightlier, healthier spots. But doubtless the day’s march had been a long one, and perhaps he had fever, and was cross. ”

“ We spent a few days at Nairobi, now a flourishing town of some 6,000 inhabitants, supplied with every modern comfort and luxury, including a well laid-out race course; and after a short trip to Lake Victoria Nyanza and Uganda, we made our way back to the Eldama Ravine, which lies some twenty miles north of Landiani Station in the province of Naivasha. ”

“ For it must not be forgotten that Nairobi, in spite of these things—due to the direct but slender thread of communication by railroad and ships—is actually in the middle of an African wilderness—is a black man's town, as far as numbers go. ”

“ Flourishing towns have grown up along the Uganda railway. The most important, Nairobi (q.v.) , 327 m. from Mombasa, 257 from Port Florence, was chosen in 1907 as the administrative capital of the protectorate. Naivasha, 64 m. north-north-west of Nairobi, lies in the rift-valley close to Lake Naivasha, and is 6230 ft. above the sea. It enjoys an excellent climate and is the centre of a European agricultural settlement. Kisumu or Port Florence (a term confined to the harbour) is a flourishing town built on a hill overlooking Victoria Nyanza. It is the entrepôt for the trade of Uganda. ”

“ Nairobi, on a plateau higher than Denver, is the administrative centre of Kenya Colony and a healthful place for white men. Farms are springing up about it, and there are already 2,000 Europeans in this African outpost. ”

“ It is said that hotels and a bank are being constructed, which will certainly add to the comfort and possibly to the appearance of the town. Nairobi, though not beautiful in itself, is the connecting link between two dissimilar regions, each very beautiful in its own way. ”

“ Nairobi, with only 1,200 whites, has the largest European population of any city north of Salisbury and Bulawayo (Rhodesia) as far as Cairo, (Egypt) , or in the full length of Africa to the west and northwest.
The negro is not the horse of Nairobi. While few horses are seen, native oxen, with humps on their shoulders almost as large as a dromedary's, lumber through the streets yoked to wagons loaded with merchandise. 246
As the Zulu language is the key to the tribal dialects of South Africa, the Kiswahili language is likewise the key to the many native dialects in this section of Africa. ”

“ The more fancy dwellings are now being painted, and some stone and brick buildings are rising.
The Nairobi of to-day is largely cow pastures. It is a city of magnificent distances. All the places of importance seem to be several miles from each other and the patches between are often grazing ground. ”

“ The site of Nairobi was selected as the headquarters of the Uganda railway, and the first buildings were erected in 1899. For some time nearly all its inhabitants were railway officials and Indian coolies engaged in the construction of the line. In 1902 the surrounding highlands were found to be suitable for European settlement, and Nairobi speedily grew in importance ”

“ We reached Mombasa in due course, and from there [Pg 2] proceeded to Nairobi by the railway then in course of construction to Uganda. Nairobi is 327 miles from the coast, and is an important centre, being the headquarters of both the Civil Administration of the Protectorate and the Uganda railway. On our arrival, George received an offer, which he accepted, to go up to the lake with a steamer, which was then on the way out from England in sections, and on his arrival at the lake with it to rebuild it. I remained in Nairobi. ”

“ I sat there until the sun had set, and on the remotest horizon the shadow of Kilimanjaro, a hundred miles away, rose against the sky. I sat there till it grew dark, and the great plains faded from me, thinking of the three men who died at Luguru: of James the martyr predestinate; of Godovius consumed in the flames which he had kindled; of M‘Crae whom Eva Burwarton had loved. It was very still. All the shallow life of Nairobi might have been as far away as the great mountain’s filmy shadow. And then, when I turned to make my way back in the darkness to the club, a sudden sound startled me. ”

“ If you would have it—and for those who are in search of further horrors there is horror enough—it is all written in the Bluebook, or White Paper, or whatever it is called, which tells of the persecutions and indignities of the English prisoners at Taborah. One heard enough of these things at Nairobi in the winter of 1916; one heard them with pity and with admiration, but never with the thrilling sense of drama, remote and intense, which underlay Eva’s story of the months before. She didn’t stay long in Nairobi. ”

“ Don't be tempted to engage the first servants who apply to you at Nairobi. If you wait there a week I'll send my Kazimoto to you; he's a very good gun-bearer. He'll be out of a job when I'm gone. I shall give him his fare to Nairobi. Engage him if you want a dependable boy, but remember the rule about dogs: a good one has one master! I don't mean Kazimoto is a dog—far from it. I mean, treat him as reasonably as you would a dog, and he'll serve you well. He's a first-class Nyamwezi, from German East. ”

“ The town of Nairobi, the capital of the East Africa Protectorate, stands on the base of wooded hills at the three hundred and twenty-seventh mile of the railroad. Originally chosen as a convenient place for assembling the extensive depots and shops necessary to the construction and maintenance of the railway, it enjoys no advantages as a residential site. The ground on which the town is built is low and swampy. The supply of water is indifferent, and the situation generally unhealthy. ”

“ Nairobi promises to become one of the railroad centres of this part of the world. It is the chief station between the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria, and a road is now proposed from here to Mt. Kenya. The Uganda Railway goes through some of the poorest country in the colony, and the Mt. Kenya road will open up a rich agricultural region which is thickly populated by tribes more than ordinarily industrious. The railroad shops are here, and the employees have a large collection of tin cottages for their homes. ”

“ THE HIGHLANDS OF EAST AFRICA
"Colour" is already the dominant question at Nairobi. "We mean to make East Africa a white man's country," cries, in strident tones, the Colonists' Association on every occasion. Truly a respectable and impressive policy; but one which seems, at first sight, rather difficult to achieve in a land where there are, so far, fewer than two thousand five hundred whites and more than four million black aboriginals. Can East Africa ever become a white man's country? ”

“ It houses a large population mysteriously, for it is of slight extent. Then on the borders of town are the two great native villages—one belonging to the Somalis, and the other hospitably accommodating the swarms of caravan porters and their families. For, just as in old days Mombasa and Zanzibar used to be the points from which caravans into the interior would set forth, now Nairobi outfits the majority of expeditions. Probably ten thousand picked natives of various tribes are engaged in the profession. ”

“ In Nairobi the popular way to travel is in jinrikishas much like those of Japan but sometimes made in America. Two good-natured Negroes man each one and sing a monotonous song as they trot uphill and down. ”

“ After we had settled down in our fresh camp we concentrated our attention on exchanging the remainder of our cloth for sheep, so that we might start on our return journey to Nairobi. El Hakim wished to get back to Nairobi in November for personal reasons, otherwise we should have gone back to M’thara, and after buying a fresh supply of food there, and getting the forty odd loads of beads which were in N’Dominuki’s charge, we had intended journeying to Lake Baringo and thence northward into the country of the Turkana. ”

“ Here the railway construction people pitched one of their settlements and put up a station, and from this has risen the town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants, of whom fully one thousand are white, a larger proportion than can be found in any settlement of the same age on the continent of Africa, while I may add that everything 308points to an increased rather than a diminished rate of progression!
Nairobi is no bush settlement, where one expects to “rough it” as part of the ordinary daily routine. On leaving the train one can engage a cab, or even a motor, to drive one to a good hotel ”

“ They are pushed and pulled by black Africans, two to each vehicle. One man goes in the shafts and the other pushes behind. They are each clad in a single cotton cloth which flaps back and forth as they run, exposing their nakedness. The streets are unpaved and frequently masses of dust. Along many of them eucalyptus trees have been planted and have grown so rapidly that most of the roads are now shaded by this mournfully drooping foliage.
The population of Nairobi is about twenty thousand, of which only a tenth are Europeans. ”

“ We rattled out of Nairobi at a great pace, and swung into the Fort Hall Road. This famous thoroughfare, one of the three or four made roads in all East Africa, is about sixty miles long. It is a strategic necessity but is used by thousands of natives on their way to see the sights of the great metropolis. As during the season there is no water for much of the distance, a great many pay for their curiosity with their lives. The road skirts the base of the hills, winding in and out of shallow canyons and about the edges of rounded hills. To the right one can see far out across the Athi Plains. ”

“ In the mean time the men were busy gorging the elephant meat. A little M’kamba boy named M’waniki composed a song, which was sung with great success by a lady named Kinyala, who, with many others, had on the previous day joined their fortunes to those of our porters, in many cases deserting their husbands and homes in M’thara that they might follow the safari to Nairobi, which, to these poor creatures, was a vast and distant city of a splendour beyond their wildest dreams. ”

“ Nairobi was the blackest town visited. Though considerable building was being done, a white man—such as carpenter, mason, plasterer or bricklayer—was not seen engaged at that class of work, all labor being done by Indians; most of the contractors also were Indians. The wages paid these blacks are from $1 to $1.25 a day. Natives carrying the hod, or bucket, rather, are paid from 6 to 12 cents a day.
Mention was made in Leg Four of Suva, Fiji, having a daily newspaper, by reason of two tri-weeklies appearing on alternate days. ”