THE EAST AFRICAN RAILROAD 89 



sity in order to secure Britain's hold upon the rich inland states of 

 Africa, is actually paying its way, which it was not expected to do 

 within any reasonable period. Nearly fifty thousand dollars a mile 

 were spent upon its construction, and every few miles are neat little 

 stations with their ticket offices, water tanks, signals and flower beds, 

 just as in a civilized country, though on all sides of them is the thick 

 jungle of the tropics. Every telegraph post is numbered, the grades 

 and curves are in line with modern development, and the trains, 

 modelled upon the Indian railway pattern, are practically comfortable. 



As the train winds inland and upward the traveler forgets that 

 he is under the equator, until at a height of 4,000 feet above the sea 

 the jungle changes into forest, characteristic of a cooler climate than 

 the tangled luxuriance of the jungles. Farther on the railway emerges 

 into the plains. Vast fields of green grass intersected by streams, 

 densely wooded with dark trees and coarse scrub, are broken by rough 

 ridges and hills. Here right from the railway train can be seen 

 crowds of wild animals, herds of antelope and gazelle, zebras, wilde- 

 beeste, hartebeeste, wild ostriches and small deer. At Simba is a 

 fruitful hunting ground. Lions and girafifes are abundant, and they 

 say that in the early days of the railroad a rhinoceros measured his 

 strength against the engine on the tracks with disastrous results to 

 himself, after which the rest of his tribe retired to the river beds at 

 some distance from the railway. 



A favorite way of shooting game in this section is to ride up and 

 down the line on a trolley. The animals are so accustomed to the 

 passage of trains and natives that they do not suspect danger unless 

 the moving object stops. Accordingly the sportsman drops ofif the 

 car and allows it to pass on, frequently finding himself within range of 

 some of the big game of Africa. 



If anyone were asked the reasonable question why the multitude 

 of animals which frequent the railway zone do so with such utter con- 

 fidence and such lack of fear of their natural enemy, man, the answer 

 is that they are protected within this zone, shooting being forbidden 

 within a fixed distance of the railway, except in the case of such dan- 

 gerous brutes as the lion, the leopard, the hyena and the rhinoceros. 

 The strange thing is that the animals have come to recognize this fact 



