XIII 

 UP FROM THE COAST 



NAIROBI is situated at the far edge of the great 

 Athi Plains and just below a range of hills. 

 It might about as well have been anywhere else; and 

 perhaps better a few miles back in the higher country. 

 Whether the funny little narrow guage railroad 

 exists for Nairobi, or Nairobi for the railroad, it 

 would be difficult to say. Between Mombasa and 

 this interior placed-to-order town, certainly, there is 

 nothing, absolutely nothing, either in passengers or 

 freight, to justify building the line. That distance 

 is if I remember it correctly about three hundred 

 and twenty miles. A dozen or so names of stations 

 appear on the map. These are water tanks, tele- 

 graph stations, or small groups of tents in which 

 dwell black labourers — on the railroad. 



The way climbs out from the tropical steaming 

 coast belt to and across the high scrub desert, and 

 then through lower rounded hills to the plains. 

 On the desert is only dense thorn brush — and a 

 possibility that the newcomer, if he looks very closely, 



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