xm. 



UP FROM THE COAST. 



NAIROBI is situated at the far edge of the 

 great Athi Plains and just below a range 

 of hills. It might about as well have been any- 

 where else, and perhaps better a few miles back 

 in the higher country. Whether the funny little 

 narrow-gauge railroad exists for Nairobi, or 

 Nairobi for the railroad, it would be difficult to 

 say. Between Mombasa and this interior placed- 

 to-order town, certainly, there is nothing, abso- 

 lutely nothing, either in passengers or freight, to 

 justify building the line. That distance is, if I 

 remember it correctly, about three hundred and 

 twenty miles. A dozen or so names of stations 

 appear on the map. These are water tanks, tele- 

 graph stations, or small groups of tents in which 

 dwell black labourers on the railroad. 



The way climbs out from the tropical steaming 

 coast belt to and across the high scrub desert, 



