CHAPTER IX 

 NZOIA PLATEAU AND ITS TRIBES 



TT^XCEPT on our own plains bordering the Rocky Moun- 

 l tains, I never breathed air that seemed to me more 

 invigourating than the breeze blowing over this green and 

 beautiful land. Some day it may prove to be the health 

 resort of the country. There are a few papyrus swamps, but 

 I never saw a mosquito. Flies there are none, nor fleas, 

 nor ticks (the pest of man and beast) ; the soil is evidently 

 rich, the grass rank, except where the vast herds of game 

 keep it down. And the forests on its borders furnish the 

 finest and most abundant timber in East Africa. As I 

 said before, Boer colonies from the Transvaal, have put in 

 applications for the whole of it. And the value they place 

 on possible holdings there, I saw illustrated but yesterday 

 when one of them (a few are here already) calmly said, he 

 had sold his concession of 10,000 acres to a newcomer Boer 

 for 1,200, and this, be it remembered, was before he had 

 put up one fence post or turned one sod. I doubt greatly 

 whether the Boer's proposed transfer of a farm he had done 

 absolutely nothing on, and which had cost just the survey 

 fees (less than 40) and not another penny, will be favour- 

 ably considered at Nairobi headquarters. This same Boer 

 loses no single opportunity of openly saying he hates the 

 government under whose too easy rules he has already 

 acquired these 10,000 acres of fine land, at one halfpenny 

 an acre annual rental; and yet he actually proposes to him- 

 self the raising of a sum, which to him is a fortune, on such 

 terms as these. 



It is only fair to the rest of his countrymen, who are about 



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