MATTERS, INCLUDING PETS AND INSECTS 



The two battalions, 1st and 3rd, of the King's 

 African Rifles behaved excellently ; many of the 

 askaris of the latter battalion were tame Masai, 

 looking so different to their wild brethren in their 

 khaki uniforms. Our 1st battalion marched off from 

 the review as if it were one man, no English regi- 

 ment could have gone in better order. 



Plague again broke out in Nairobi in March. 

 A Goanese shop-keeper with whom we dealt died 

 of it. First of all his assistant was suspected of 

 plague, but died from another cause, then the 

 Goanese himself grew sick. He had had a bad foot 

 for some time, and he and his assistant lived in a little 

 back room behind the shop, which was none too 

 clean. He took the plague and died very quickly, 

 as is usual. After this his head clerk became so 

 nervous that he went off his head, and had to be 

 locked up in the strong room in jail ; what became 

 of him I never heard. So of course the shop was 

 closed for a time. The widow came up from 

 Mombasa, where she lived, as Nairobi is rather too 

 cold for Goanese, to settle business matters, natur- 

 ally she was too late to see her husband, who 

 died a very rich man, having two lakhs of rupees. 



Some of the askaris brought me in a young 

 gazelle, a duiker, but poor little thing its back legs 

 seemed paralyzed ; they must have hit it with a 

 stick. It was only a baby, so I fed it with a foun- 

 tain-pen filler, stuck through the cork of a whisky 



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