68 ROOSEVELT HUNTING GROUNDS. 



BETWEEN NAIROBI AND FORT HALL. 



A good road for carriages, wagons or automobiles — and you see 

 them all — runs from Nairobi, via Fort Hall and Embo, to the wonder- 

 ful region of which Mount Kenia is the center. Embo is twenty-eight 

 miles from Fort Hall and is the most distant military post which the 

 British have established in that direction. Fort Hall is nearly opposite 

 Mount Kenia, south of the Tana River, and Embo lies to the southeast 

 of that wonderful dome of nature. 



v.- 



The road which takes one to these outposts passes through a varied 

 country, often wild and seamed with gorges in its first stages, but gen- 

 erally fertile and well watered by various tributaries of the Athi and 

 Tana rivers. The spacious colonial estates, or ranches, are scattered 

 along the route for thirty or forty miles from Nairobi. One farm may 

 grow coffee — which is such a luxuriant crop — and on the next estate 

 may be herded together, by a native child or full-grown, a miscellaneous 

 but placid assortment of ostriches, sheep and cattle. A complete dairy 

 farm is liable to be in operation in the vicinity; also a truck garden pro- 

 ducing sweet potatoes, Indian corn, beans and other vegetables may 

 adjoin it. At one place is to be found a plucky English family grap- 

 pling with a ten-thousand acre farm, their neighbor an old Boer, who. 

 after having treked the length of Africa to avoid the British flag, now 

 stolidly smokes his pipe by his grass house, tends to his small herd of 

 indifferent looking cattle ; in his way, is hospitable to his British co- 

 workers, and eager enough to show the tourist what he knows about 

 the whereabouts of lions. 



About half a day's safari from Fort Hall, where the Chania and Thika 

 rivers effect a juncture with the main stream of the Tana, is a beautiful 

 meadowy tract within sight and hearing of fine plunging waterfalls, and 

 the locality is one of the favorite camping grounds for lion hunters. It 

 is an agreeable programme, after indulging in the sport the first half of 

 the day, to spend the afternoon in a ride to Fort Hall, through a green, 

 comparatively smooth and pleasant country. There will be found the 

 commissioner's house, with a ditch around it, a jail, an Indian bazaar 

 and a few houses for the militia and police. If the visitor is fortunate, 

 he will arrive while a great gathering of Kikuku chiefs, warriors and 

 women is loudly discussing the dance of the following morning. He 

 will then accept the commissioner's invitation to stay over night. In the 



