30 



THE EASTERN PROVINCE 



large clumps the extra- 

 ordinary lobelias, the 

 flower columns of which 

 grow to a height of 

 fifteen feet and more. 

 This beautiful land has 

 not in it a single ugly or 

 unfriendly spot. Every- 

 where the landscape is 

 gracious and pleasing in 

 a quiet, homely way, 

 offering few violent forms 

 or startling effects. It 

 is thus singularly liome- 

 like, and as it is almost 

 entirely without native 

 inhabitants, it seems to 

 lie awaiting the advent 

 of another race which 

 should make it a won- 

 derland of wealth and 

 comfort, a little England, 

 half a Scotland, or a large 

 Wales, lying exactly 

 under the equator at an 

 average altitude of 4,000 

 feet above the Victoria Nyanza, of whose silvery'gulfs and ghostly mountain 

 coast-line glimpses at a distance of ninety miles may be caught occasion- 

 ally from some breezy height or through the interstices of woods which 

 themselves might be in Surrey. These views of a vast but distant 

 seascape, which, owing to the height of the horizon, seem to appear in 

 the &ky, give that occasional touch of weirdness to the Nandi landscapes 

 which would be the case in England or Scotland, if amid familiar land- 

 scapes we suddenly saw limned in grey or silver in the lower sky the 

 features of a foreign land. In the direction of the Victoria Nyanza, the 

 plateau sometimes crumbles away into broadening river valleys, through 

 which one descends rapidly to tropical regions. 



The forests which clothe the eastern descent of the Nandi Plateau 

 above the station called Eldama Eavine, and which stretch (with intervals) 

 between the Eldama Ravine and the Upper Molo River, besides similar 

 forests skirting the lower parts of the same plateau almost as far south as 

 the German frontier, are extremely dense, full of magnificent timber, 



24. BAMBOO FOKEST, NANDI liOAl), 9,000 FEET. 



