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 
