CHAPTER XII 
Nairobi and Mt. Kenya 
N AIROBI, the capital of the East Africa Protectorate, lies at the 
foot of wooded hills on the railway, three hundred and twenty- 
seven miles from Mombasa. The town is built on low swampy 
ground, in a rather unhealthy situation, without a very good water 
supply. This happened in the first place because the location was 
convenient for shops and supply depots used in the construction of the 
railway. The government buildings, however, the hospitals and bar¬ 
racks, are placed a mile farther west on higher ground. About 15,000 
people, with less than 1,000 whites, occupy the tin houses which con¬ 
stitute the town, but the stores are equipped to supply the needs of a 
very large neighborhood, and Nairobi is therefore headquarters for 
this portion of the world. A brigade of the King’s African Rifles, and 
the Central Offices of the Uganda Railway, are also stationed here, and 
the incidentals of civilization which the English always carry with 
them make a strange contrast with the surrounding wilderness of the 
country. To see, for instance, a large company of men sitting down 
to dinner in evening dress would seem to us scarcely in harmony in 
a spot where ten years before lions and other wild beasts were undis¬ 
turbed. 
It was at this point that President Roosevelt picked up the greater 
part of his hunting outfit, and made a number of hunting excursions in 
the vicinity. 
To add to the incongruity of this landscape under the Equator, 
one hundred miles away rises the snow clad peak of Mt. Kenya, visible 
on a clear day from this higher ground above Nairobi. The flanks 
of the mountain can be reached by a fairly good road in an automobile. 
It passes through a fertile country, undulating and marked by numer¬ 
ous water courses, shaded with flourishing trees. A number of 
colonists have taken up large estates of many thousand acres, raising 
ostriches, sheep and cattle, or coffee and other staple crops. 
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