AFRICAN CAMP FIRES 



different compartments to detail excitedly to each 

 other what they have seen. There is always an 

 honest super-enthusiast who believes he has seen 

 rhinoceros, lions, or leopards. He is looked upon 

 with envy by the credulous, and with exasperation 

 by all others. 



So the little train puffs and tugs along. Suddenly 

 it happens on a barbed-wire fence, and immediately 

 after enters the town of Nairobi. The game has 

 persisted right up to that barbed wire fence. 



That station platform is thronged with a hetero- 

 geneous multitude of people. The hands of a dozen 

 raggetty black boys are stretched out for luggage. 

 The newcomer sees with delight a savage with a tin 

 can in his stretched ear lobe; another with a set of 

 wooden skewers set fanwise around the edge of the 

 ear; he catches a glimpse of a beautiful naked 

 creature, very proud, very decorated with beads and 

 heavy polished wire. Then he is ravished away 

 by the friend, or agent, or hotel representative who 

 has met him, and hurried out through the gates 

 between the impassive and dignified Sikh sentries 

 to the hack. I believe nobody but the newcomer 

 ever rides in the hack; and then but once, from the 

 station to the hotel. After that he uses rickshaws. 

 In fact it is probable that the hack is maintained 

 for the sole purpose of giving the newcomer a grand 



116 



