6 THE LAND OF THE LION 
picturesque cotton togas, stand in groups at many a corner, 
laughing and chaffing the idle native porter as he saunters 
by, while hundreds of their more virtuous (let us hope) 
and much more naked sisters, stand in companies or 
_ squat on the ground outside some Indian’s store or con- 
tractor’s office, a black baby in an unspeakably oily bag 
at their breast, and sixty pounds of mealy meal, tightly 
bagged, slung by a headstrap, and carried low down 
behind their shoulders. Yes, I never can get tired of 
sauntering in Nairobi main street. 
The Europeans whose bungalows dot the wooded hills 
that on two sides surround the town, have a fine view 
over the Athi plains. With Zeiss glass it is still possible 
to see immense herds of game — harte beste, zebra, gnu, 
Grant’s and Thompson’s gazelles — feeding. ‘Thirty miles 
away stands Donyea Sabuk —a partly wooded precipitous 
hill; rising some three thousand feet, and round its base — 
within a circle of a few miles, I suppose it is no exaggera- 
tion to say, that twenty white men have been killed or 
mauled by lions. 
The flowers in Nairobi are a delightful surprise and 
wonder. Even in the dusty streets of the town they are 
plentiful. In poky little ill-kept gardens, or on unsightly 
corrugated iron roofs they climb and twine. When some 
pains are taken with them, and they are tended and watered 
in drought, they bloom and flourish as Italian roses do, 
only instead of blooming as these, for a few weeks only, 
at Nairobi roses bloom nine months in the year. Roses, 
passion flowers, pomegranates, orange trees, Bougainvillea, _ 
and many more, make scores of cheap little houses seem 
bowers of delight. 
Even along the unsightly paths that always struggle 
into a frontier town, rare and beautiful flowers sometimes 
surprise you, growing luxuriantly in front of many a 
mere hut. 
