36 
A COLONY IN THE MAKING 
CHAP. 
of their capacity. They applied for farms in these 
districts. At this time Sir Charles Eliot was H.M.’s 
Commissioner in the Protectorate. He saw at once 
the difficulty presented by this fierce nomad race ; 
that not only were they a menace to the prosperity of 
the country and of its inhabitants, white and black, but 
also that they themselves must inevitably stand in 
danger of degeneration if not of extermination. He 
realised the two alternatives ; the first of giving them 
a reserve large enough to allow them to carry on their 
own mode of wandering life, the second to make an 
attempt to induce them to abandon their habits and 
gradually to become useful members of society by 
curtailing their area and interspersing it with European 
farms and settlements. Realising the inevitable 
difficulties and dangers it evolved, he chose the latter 
policy, which policy was immediately reversed by his 
successor, Sir Donald Stewart, with the connivance, 
or rather at the instigation of the Home authorities. 
In considering the two views there is one thing that 
must not be lost sight of, and that is this—Sir Charles 
Eliot was an extraordinary man, almost without doubt 
the ablest and most far-sighted that the Pro¬ 
tectorate has seen up to the present date. His book 
in itself—“ The East African Protectorate ”—reveals, 
not only the wonderful knowledge that he had of all 
sides of the country during the period of his 
administration, but also an almost uncanny prescience 
of events that were to come. But Sir Charles Eliot 
was more. He stands almost unique among Colonial 
Governors as a man who sacrificed his career rather 
than give way over a point in which he believed his 
personal honour to be involved. It is to be hoped, 
and indeed it is sure, that his name will live as long as 
