INDUSTRIES AND NATIVES 



NAIROBI is the town par excellence of British East 

 Africa; population, white and Indian, twenty-five 

 hundred; colored, as many thousand; located on a 

 plain at the edge of the game country; busy and grow- 

 ing; big with possibility of agricultural development, with 

 many willing to exploit the same, but restrained and 

 embarrassed for the want of labor. White men cannot 

 work in the fields unde^ran equa.tQ_nal sun T anj the 

 negroes~will not^ to any great extent. The land is 

 owned in too large tracts, and small plots are offered at 

 maximum retail prices. Coffee land four miles from 

 Nairobi was held at sixty-five dollars per acre in a wild 

 state. To build a house and other necessary structures, 

 clear the land and raise a "catch crop," which is neces- 

 sary to put the ground in condition to receive the coffee 

 shrubs, and await the growth of the coffee shrub, three 

 or four years, until a crop may be expected, would add 

 greatly to the cost of the acreage. This leaves little 

 to be hoped for in the line of appreciation in value, and 

 militates against the influx of small investors, which are 

 indispensable to the development of a new country. 

 A/\jf Several Americans are among the landed proprietors, 

 fll\ notably W. R. McMillan and Paul J. Rainey, the sports- 



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