MEETING COLONEL ROOSEVELT 
125 
the whole protectorate, and the names of these are 
duly catalogued and known to the post-office offi¬ 
cials both in Mombasa and Nairobi. 
If a strange name appears on a letter or des¬ 
patch, inquiries are made and the identity of the 
stranger is quickly established. If he is a sports¬ 
man, the outfitters in Nairobi will know who he is. 
They will have equipped him with porters and the 
other essentials of a caravan, and they will know 
exactly in which section of the protectorate he is 
hunting. So the letter is readdressed in care of the 
boma s or government station, nearest to that sec¬ 
tion. The letter duly arrives at the boma , and a 
native runner is told to go out and deliver the mes¬ 
sage. He starts off, and by inquiry of other natives 
and by relying on a natural instinct that is little 
short of marvelous he ultimately finds the object of 
his search and delivers his message. 
If you look at a map of British East Africa you 
will be amazed at the number of names that are 
marked upon it. You would quite naturally think 
that the country was rather thickly settled, where¬ 
as in fact there are very few places of settlement 
away from the single line of railroad that runs 
from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza. The protec¬ 
torate is divided into subdistricts, each one of which 
has a capital, or boma, as it is called. This boma 
usually consists of a white man’s residence, a little 
post-office, one or two Indian stores where all the 
necessities of a simple life may be procured, and a 
number of native grass huts. There is usually a 
