82 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



must make one partial exception to this general good- 

 will — the Boer. Now the Boer, as a Boer, is no more 

 unacceptable in the Protectorate than in other parts of 

 the Empire. Throughout the whole of that Empire the 

 fight that he put up and the sacrifices that he made ere 

 he joined it gave him a free pass to its good-fellowship. 

 The country numbers many Boers who are not only 

 respected but most popular. Unfortunately, owing to 

 mischance, and I fear I must add mismanagement, 

 they are in a minority. In 1908 there was an influx of 

 Boers, of whom it would not be too much to say that 

 they left their country for their country's good. They 

 arrived pretty well destitute. Probably ^2000 would 

 have covered the worldly wealth of the whole 300 

 or 400. They applied for farms. Now the land 

 regulations say, and rightly so, that any applicant 

 should be possessed of ^400 at least before he be 

 allotted a farm. This regulation would have cut out 

 some 95 per cent, of these applicants ; and I venture to 

 say that, had they been Englishmen, they would have 

 been refused. An innate sense of chivalry — and, 

 might I add, a policy of laissez-faire ? — caused their 

 applications to be accepted and they were one and all 

 granted farms. Even so, it might not have been a 

 serious matter had they been scattered throughout the 

 country, but, alas ! they were all granted farms in one 

 block in the newly opened Uasin Guishu Plateau. 

 This plateau forms in some ways the keystone of the 

 whole Protectorate. This is due not so much to its 

 fertility and climate, though both are excellent, but to 

 the fact that it is by far the largest tract of country at 

 present opened which is not subdivided either naturally 

 or artificially ; for here we have at least two million 

 acres of splendid land undivided by native, forest, or 





