32 



THE EASTERN PROVINCE 



eastwards over a magnificent 

 landscape — the breadth of the 

 Kift Valley and the opposite 

 escarpment of Laikipia. It is 

 a place with an almost English 

 climate, and gardens where 

 English flow'ers bloom. Some- 

 how every one who has come 

 to it has fallen in love with it 

 and wished to remain there. It 

 has, however, bnt an indifferent 

 water supply (should it become 

 a large city), and lies twenty 

 miles now from the finished 

 railway line. But for these two 

 disadvantages, it has suggested 

 itself to Administrator after 

 Administrator, traveller after 

 traveller, as tiie capital of a 

 United East Africa. I imagine, 

 however, that this desired capital 

 will eventually be built on the 

 railway, perhaps twenty-five to 

 thirty miles south of the Kaviue. 

 Yet the Eavine station will 

 always remain a useful place 

 from which to control the 

 thickly populated Kamasia 

 country and the regions about 

 Lake Baringo. 

 The Nandi Plateau on the western side is eaten down at its middle 

 into a wasp waist by the Nyando Valley. This valley has been selected 

 as the easiest and shortest route for the Uganda Eailway to follow from 

 Lake Nakuro, up and over the Nandi Plateau, and down by a fairly 

 gentle descent to Kavirondo Bay on the Victoria Nyanza. The valley 

 and its branch valleys are formed by powerful streams rising in the Nandi 

 and Lumbwa countries and uniting for the most part to form the Eiver 

 Nyando, which enters the easternmost prolongation of the long gulf of 

 Kavirondo Bay. As the railway descends from its highest point of 8,300 

 feet on the flanks of Mount Londiani — descending in innumerable curves 

 and twists to obtain a reasonable gradient — the traveller will quit the 

 forests of junipers and yews, and enter that belt of umbrella-topped 



26. A CASCADE AT THE RAVINE STATION 



