202 
A COLONY IN THE MAKING 
CHAP. 
dispose of. Wattle timber is excellent fuel, but very 
hot, and will probably necessitate an increased size of 
fuel box ; but the wattle industry is likely to be such 
an important one to the Protectorate that to a State- 
owned line this is a minor detail. 
Nakuru provides us with our dinner, and an 
excellent one it is ; the hotel here being without 
doubt the best in the country. This town is the 
centre of the stock-raising district and the scene of 
the annual agricultural show ; it is likely to be a place 
of some considerable importance. 
Night is now upon us, and we shall accordingly 
pass deep in slumber through perhaps the most 
interesting as well as almost the richest portions of 
the line. First comes Njoro with its wheat-fields, 
some 5,000 acres of which are already under crop, its 
wattle plantations, its saw-mills, and its pigs. Then 
we shall run through the glorious cedars of the Mau 
forests, the haunt of buffalo and elephant and of the 
mysterious bongo and the giant forest hog. After 
this we come out into the rolling downs, splendid 
pasturage, and forest glades of Molo. Once over 
Mau Summit, 8,300 feet high, we begin to drop 
towards the lake, passing into forest land again. At 
Londiani a splendid new and metalled road branches 
off to the Uasin Guishu plateau, and this place is likely 
to be one of the most important centres on the line. 
Not only is it extremely beautiful and healthy enough 
to be a sanatorium, but the soil, especially suitable for 
wattle, is second to none. Already an extremely 
comfortable hotel and other buildings mark its 
advance. Lumbwa is another centre of a farming 
community growing wheat and wattle and declaring 
