CHAPTER IX 
NZOIA PLATEAU AND ITS TRIBES 
XCEPT on our own plains bordering the Rocky Moun- 
tains, I never breathed air that seemed to me more 
invigourating than the breeze blowing over this green and 
beautiful land. Some day it may prove to be the health 
resort of the country. There area few papyrus swamps, but 
I never saw a mosquito. Flies there are none, nor fleas, 
nor ticks (the pest of man and beast); the soil is evidently 
rich, the grass rank, except where the vast herds of game 
keep it down. And the forests on its borders furnish the 
finest and most abundant timber in East Africa. As I 
said before, Boer colonies from the Transvaal, have put in 
applications for the whole of it. And the value they place 
on possible holdings there, I saw illustrated but yesterday 
when one of them (a few are here already) calmly said, he 
had sold his concession of 10,000 acres to a newcomer Boer 
for £1,200, and this, be it remembered, was before he had 
put up one fence post or turned one sod. I doubt greatly 
whether the Boer’s proposed transfer of a farm he had done 
absolutely nothing on, and which had cost just the survey 
fees (less than £40) and not another penny, will be favour- 
ably considered at Nairobi headquarters. ‘This same Boer 
loses no single opportunity of openly saying he hates the 
government under whose too easy rules he has already 
acquired these 10,000 acres of fine land, at one halfpenny 
an acre annual rental; and yet he actually proposes to him- 
self the raising of a sum, which to him is a fortune, on such 
terms as these. 
It is only fair to the rest of his countrymen, who are about 
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