My African Journey

Originally chosen as a convenient place for assembling the extensive depots and shops necessary to the construction and maintenance of the railway, it enjoys no ad

ady being occupied sparsely by Government buildings, hospitals, and barracks. It is now too late to change, and thu

er and proportions. There are five hundred and eighty whites, three thousand one hundred Indians, and ten thousand five hundred and fifty African natives. The shops and stores are, however, much more considerable than these figures would appear to warrant, and are fully capable of supplying the varied needs of settlers and planters over a wide area. Nairobi is also the headquarters of a brigade of the King's African Rifles, the central office and depot of the Uganda Railw

ur, King's Af

l the materials for hot and acrimonious debate. The white man versus the black; the Indian versus both; the settler as against the planter; the town contrasted with the country; the official class against the unofficial; the coast and the highlands; the railway administration and the Protectorate generally; the King's African Rifles and the East Africa Protectorate Police; all these different points of vie

successive undulations and intersected by numerous gorges whose streams are shaded by fine trees, unfolds itself to the eye. Scattered about upon spacious estates of many thousand acres are a score or two of colonists, each gradually making himself a home and a living in his own way. One raises stock; another plants coffee, which grows so exuberantly in this generous soil as to threaten the

n the way t

a few months' experience of paternal government in a neighbouring Protectorate. He has few cattle and less cash, but he holds decided views as to the whereabouts of lions; there, moreover, stands the heavy tilted wagon of the Great Trek-an ark of refuge when all else fails; and for the rest there is plenty

oth meadow. Southwards, a hundred yards away, a fine waterfall plunges downwards over enormous boulders amid tall, interlacing trees. The muffled roar of another

reputation of his adopted country. How to find, and, having found, to kill, a lion is the unvarying theme of conversation; and every place and every journey is judged by a simple standard-"lions or no lions." At the Thika camp, then, several gentlemen, accomplished

Party at

r. Marsh, Marquis Gandolfi-Hornyold, Hon. K. Dund

o the chest, a pair of thin khaki knickerbockers cut short five inches-at least-above the knee, boots, and a pair of putties comprise the whole attire. Nothing else is worn. The skin, exposed to sun, thorns, and

in India they ride the pig-that is to say, neck or nothing-across rocks, holes, tussocks, nullahs, through high grass, thorn scrub, undergrowth, turning him, shepherding him, heading him this way and that until he is brought to bay. For his part the lion is no seeker of quarrels; he is often described in accent

lls up abruptly and offers battle. Once he has done this, he will run no more. He means to fight, and to fight to the death. He means to charge home; and when a lion, maddened with the agony of a bullet-wound, distressed by long and hard pursuit, or, most of all, a lioness in defence of her cubs, is definitely committed to the charge, death is the only possible conclusion.

arrives at the spot where the lion is cornered in much the same manner as the matador enters the arena, the others standing aside deferentially, ready to aid him or divert the lion. If his bullet kills, he is, no doubt, justly proud. If it only wounds, the lion charges the nearest horseman. For

filthy hyena, and it was not until we had beaten thoroughly for two hours more than three miles of reed-bed that we saw him-a splendid great yellow cat, looking as big as a bullock-bounding away up the opposite hill. Off started our riders like falcons; but alas!-if "alas!" is the proper word-a deep and impassable nullah

a at Thi

Wilson

greener, smoother, and more pleasant-looking. Fort Hall is not a fort in any military sense, but the Commissioner's house with a ditch round it, a jail, a few houses, and an Indian bazaar. The station is hardly well s

figure. His hair and body are smeared with the red earth of his native land, compounded into a pigment by mixture with the slimy juice of the castor-oil plant, which abounds. Fantastic headdresses, some of ostrich feathers, others of metal or leather; armlets and leglets of twisted wire; stripes of white clay rubbed across the red pigment; here and there an old pot-hat or some European garment, incongruously contrasted with leopard-skins and bulls' horns; broad, painted cow-hide shields, and spears with soft iron blades nearly four feet long, complete a grotesque and indecorous picture. Still, there is a sleek grace about these active

r" at

level of economic utility. But it would surely be worth while to organize and guide this new motive force within graceful and appropriate limits. A Government runs risks when it intrudes upon the domain of fashion; but when a veritable abyss of knowledge and science separates the rulers from the ruled, when authority is dealing with a native race still plunged

turbulent red water. On the farther bank the country is really magnificent in quality and aspect. The centre of the picture is always Mount Kenya; but there never was a mountain which made so little of its height. It rises by long gentle slopes, more like a swelling of ground than a peak, from an immense upland plain, and so gradual is the acclivity that, but for the sudden outcrop of snow-clad rock which crowns the summit, no one would believe it over eighteen thousand feet high. It is its gradual rise that imparts so great a value to this noble mountain; for about its enormous base and upon its slopes, traversed by hundreds

y expedition. Yet so peaceful are the tribes-now that their intertribal fighting has been stopped-that white officers ride freely about among their villages without even carrying a pistol. All the natives met with on the road were armed with sword and spear, and all offered us their customary salutations, while many came up smiling and holding out long, moist, delicate-looking hands for me to shak

ty soldiers and police. Two young white officers-a civilian and a soldier-preside from this centre of authority, far from the telegraph, over the peace and order of an area as large as an English county, and regulate the conduct and fortunes of some seventy-five thousand natives, who have never previ

to be seen. I inquired where they were, and was shown two little groups seated round fires in the open. They were chained together by a light running chain, and after a hard day's miscellaneous work about the station they chatted peac

must judge for himself, and be judged upon his actions. Very often-for tropical diseases make many gaps in the ranks, and men must often return to England to recruit their health-the officer is not a District Commissioner at all, but a junior acting in his stead or in some one's stead, sometimes for a year or more. To him there come day by day the natives of the district with all their troubles, disputes, and intrigues. Their growing appreciation of the impartial justice of the trib

ing that they are capable of being instructed and raised from their present degradation. There are more than four million aboriginals in East Africa alone. Their care imposes a grave, and I think an inalienable, responsibility upon the British Government. It will be an ill day for these native races when their fortunes are removed from the impartial and august administration of the Crown and abandoned to the fierce self-interest of a small white population. Such an event is no doubt very remote. Yet the speculator, the planter, and the settler are knocking at the door. There are many things which ought to be done-good, wi

made to understand, the meaning of this repetition of a trial; that they are bewildered; that their confidence in their personal ruler may be weakened; that endless practical difficulties-for instance, the collection of witnesses scattered about in distant villages, and the disquietude caused to them by a second summons from the strange, mysterious power called "Government"-arise out of an error which only a lawyer could detect, and whic

ely construed the whole system of civilized jurisprudence begins to crumble, and in its place there is gradually erected a rough-and-ready practice dependent entirely for its efficiency and fairness upon the character and intelligence of the individual responsible. Necessary as it is to trust to personal authority in the control of native races of the lowest standard, it is not less necessary to assign well-marked limits to that authority, and, above all, to place the simple primary rights of accused persons to what we at home are accustomed to call a "fair trial" outside its scope. Nor does the administr

lingua franca over all this part of the world. As traders they are welcomed, as fighting men they are respected, and as sorcerers they are feared by all the tribes. Their Khan had supplied us with bananas on the previous day with many expressions of apology that, as we were unexpected, he had no "European food." To-day all this was repaired. The men of the village, to the number of perhaps f

, and we left them a quarter of an hour later still circling and hopping to and fro with quivering spears and nodding plumes to their monotonous chorus, while the white-robed Swahilis stood gravely by and bade us farewell in the dignified manners of the East. I reflected upon th

d out upon the ground and Colonel Wilson engaged in sprinkling it with arsenical powder. Then we were told the tale, which in brief was that they were driving a long reed-bed, when the lion sprang out and ran obliquely across the line of beaters. Wilson fired and the

s must be the lion. At last only one more patch of reeds remained to beat, and we took up our positions, finger on trigger, about sixty yards from the farther edge of it, while the beaters, raising an astonishing tumult with yells and the beating of tin cans, plunged boldly in. Parturiunt montes-out rushed two enormous wart-hogs. Let no one reproach the courage of the