40 THE EASTERN PllOA INCE 



food products, and the natives seem to be good agriculturists. It is fertile^ 

 and between it and the Rift Valley enormouo trackless forests stretch 

 over the rising uj^land. 



Forest of an extravagantly tropical character, an almost exact repetition 

 of the Congo Forest, clothes the crumbling edge of the Nandi Plateau 

 to the north-west, where it descends to the valley of the Nzoia and the 

 rich lands of Kabaras or Bantu Kavirondo. I have rarely seen finer 

 developments of forest in Africa than here — perhaps only in one or two 

 spots of Uganda, in the Congo Forest, and in the Cameroons. 



Even as I write this brief description of what was a few months ago 

 Uganda's Eastern Province,* I realise the changes which are taking 

 place day by day in its aspect, owing to the com[)letion of this Uganda 

 Railway, which will prove to be, I think, one of the mightiest factors 

 yet introduced into Central Africa for the transformation of a land of 

 com})lete barbarism to one at any rate attaining to the civilisation of 

 settled India. I have had the privilege of seeing this coimtry just in 

 time — just before the advent of the railway changed the Rilt Valley, the 

 Nandi Plateau, the Masai countiies, from the condition at which they were 

 at the time of Joseph Thomson (1882) to one which day by day becomes 

 increasingly different. On grassy wastes where no human being but a 

 slinking Andorobo or a few ^Masai wan-iors met the eye ; where grazed 

 Grant's gazelle, with liis magnificent horns, and the smaller but more 

 gaily coloured Gnzella tJiomson'i ; where liartebeests moved in thousands, 

 zebras in hundreds, ostriches in dozens, and rhinoceroses in couples ; 

 wliere, in fact, everything lay under the condition of Britain some 200,000 

 years ago ; not only do trains })uft" to and fro (the zebras and antelopes 

 are still there, accepting tlie locomotive like a friend, since it drives 

 away the lions and ensures the respect of the Game Lawsj, ])ut alongside 

 the railway are springing up uncounted hideous habitations of corrugated 

 iron and towns of tents and straw huts. 



The solitude of the Rift Valley has gone. Thousands of bearded Indians, 

 hundreds of Europeans and Eurasians, Negroes of every African type (from 

 the handsome Somali to the ugly Mudigo), Arabs and Persians trudge to 

 and fro on foot, ride donkeys, mules, and horses, pack the carriages like 

 herrings, set up booths, and diverge far and wide a hundred miles iu 

 each direction from the railway line, trafficking with shy and astonished 

 natives, who had scarcely realised the existence of a world outside their 

 own jungle, for the beef, mutton, fowls, eggs, and vegetable food-stuffs 

 which are to assist in feeding this invasion. Far away on Baringo natives 

 are extending their irrigation schemes and planting twice as much as 

 they planted before, knowing that there is a market where their spare food 



* This area has recently been transferred to the Administration of East Africa. 



