THE COUNTRY 35I 



of the farmer living many days march from the railroad. 

 When he does gain access to that road his difficulties are 

 not over. There is only one little narrow-gauge line for 

 all the country. The grades on it are very severe, ten 

 small carriages or trucks are as much as an engine can draw. 

 Freight rates are not as high as they were, but are still 

 very high. Labour-saving farming machinery is out of 

 question; no native could use it. If he works in the 

 sun all day, he has only his two hands, and the sun kills. 

 To break up his ground, to free it from a tropic luxuriance 

 of weed, to sow and reap it, to carry his produce to the 

 distant market, he is for all these dependent on native 

 labour. His herds may have to be driven many miles 

 to water, and if not watched at night and guarded by fires 

 and thorn boma, they would soon disappear. 



Without a regular supply, then, of native labour and 

 at a fixed price the farmer cannot live. But the farmer has 

 an inevitable competitor in the Government itself. Noth- 

 ing can be accomplished in the Protectorate without native 

 labour. The roads, the stations, the Government works, 

 the supplying of military and civil forces at distant and 

 inaccessible points all these require immense numbers 

 of partially trained and disciplined natives. 



The East African is so important both to settler and 

 official that there is often a scramble to get him, and 

 he, while he is willing to work when starvation forces him 

 to it, is apt, as soon as he has a rupee in the corner of his 

 blanket, to try to avoid working for either Government 

 or farmer. I am afraid it must be confessed that for him 

 sefari life is not always a good thing. The wages he earns 

 at it are much higher than the colonist can usually afford 

 to give and it encourages his innate tendency to wander 

 from place to place and from job to job. 



I have given the merest outline of the difficulties inci- 

 dent to the employment of labour, but even that is enough 



