VIII 
SETTLERS AND OFFICIALS 
79 
be at least ^1000 to £ 1500. Such a man is the pick 
of the service, and he has done 20 years’ work in 
the tropics to reach his position. If he has married 
he probably has children to educate at home. Con¬ 
sider the work that is expected of him—the Provincial 
Commissioner is judge, tax-collector, military adviser, 
minister of education, Ambassador-extraordinary, and 
combines every other possible office in a territory 
perhaps as big as Wales and with a population of a 
million. From the point of view of the country is 
^*5000 a year additional expenditure too much if it 
is to add the spur of ambition and hope to every 
official from the newest joined A.D.C. upwards in 
the country ? From the point of view of the settler 
there is one thing which it is not unreasonable to 
ask, and that is that in a more or less entirely 
agricultural and pastoral country like British East 
Africa each newly joining official, and I here would 
include the very highest, should have at all events an 
elementary knowledge of agriculture. It does not 
inspire respect or confidence when an official asks 
what curious manner of machinery a churn may 
be, or calls a field of oats an unnecessarily large 
lawn ! 
I cannot leave the subject without calling attention 
to the universal and most generous hospitality which is 
extended by the officials in British East Africa to all 
they come across. I do not remember ever passing 
through a Station without being fed, put up for the 
night, or being offered every assistance possible by 
those in charge ; kindnesses which can never be 
forgotten. Such hospitality has always been one of the 
most pleasant features of the country, but must, I fear, 
soon become too great a tax on such an underpaid class. 
