CHAPTER XII 



Nairobi and Mt. Kenya 



NAIROBI, the capital of the East Africa Protectorate, Hes at the 

 foot of wooded hills on the railway, three hundred and twenty- 

 seven miles from Mombasa. The town is built on low swampy 

 ground, in a rather unhealthy situation, without a very good water 

 supply. This happened in the first place because the location was 

 convenient for shops and supply depots used in the construction of the 

 railway. The government buildings, however, the hospitals and bar- 

 racks, are placed a mile farther west on higher ground. About 15,000 

 people, with less than 1,000 whites, occupy the tin houses which con- 

 stitute the town, but the stores are equipped to supply the needs of a 

 very large neighborhood, and Nairobi is therefore headquarters for 

 this portion of the world. A brigade of the King's African Rifles, and 

 the Central Offices of the Uganda Railway, are also stationed here, and 

 the incidentals of civilization which the English always carry with 

 them make a strange contrast with the surrounding wilderness of the 

 country. To see, for instance, a large company of men sitting down 

 to dinner in evening dress would seem to us scarcely in harmony in 

 a spot where ten years before lions and other wild beasts were undis- 

 turbed. 



It was at this point that President Roosevelt picked up the greater 

 part of his hunting outfit, and made a number of hunting excursions in 

 the vicinity. 



To add to the incongruity of this landscape under the Equator, 

 one hundred miles away rises the snow clad peak of Mt. Kenya, visible 

 on a clear day from this higher ground above Nairobi. The flanks 

 of the mountain can be reached by a fairly good road in an automobile. 

 It passes through a fertile country, undulating and marked by numer- 

 ous water courses, shaded with flourishing trees. A number of 

 colonists have taken up large estates of many thousand acres, raising 

 ostriches, sheep and cattle, or cofl"ee and other staple crops. 



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