i6o A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



for enabling the timber to be moved, either to the 

 local saw-mill or farther. Then again, the country 

 lying immediately beneath the forest line contains 

 some of the finest, if not the very finest, agricultural 

 land in the Protectorate. Along the southern slopes 

 it is densely populated by natives, and that by 

 a people who have carried native cultivation to a 

 very high state of efficiency. If the neighbour- 

 hood of Njoro, and also of Pundamilia be left out, 

 there is possibly as much cultivation on these slopes 

 as in the whole of the rest of the Highlands. On the 

 Western slopes there is a grand soil and climate, with 

 a rapidly increasing white population. Even if there 

 were no forests at all a railway to these parts would 

 probably prove a sound commercial undertaking. 

 When the value of the forest is added, this presump- 

 tion becomes a certainty. At the present moment the 

 British East African Government is engaged in build- 

 ing a railway — called a tramway, as being a name 

 more acceptable to the Colonial Office — towards Fort 

 Hall. At present it is projected some thirty miles 

 through an undeveloped and sparsely populated 

 district. All things are possible, but it is barely 

 credible that this short branch has been initiated 

 without the further intention of proceeding to tap 

 those districts and those industries which are the real 

 justification for such a line. The dealings of the 

 Government with this magnificent property have up 

 to the present been somewhat peculiar, or, at all 

 events, shrouded in mystery. In 1905-6, the whole 

 forest appears to have been alienated or leased to a 

 syndicate consisting of Lord Warwick, Mr. Moreton 

 Freuen and others. What their position is no 

 one appears to know, but certainly in all this time no 



