Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

It is a strange thing to go to sleep in the woods and then awake to find one’s self rolling over a high, treeless country with game by the thousand gambolling along the car tracks. We awoke on the Kapiti plains, which are about a mile above the sea and two hundred and sixty-eight miles from Mombasa. These plains are of a black sandy loam and covered with a thick grass. They look much as Iowa, Kansas, or Nebraska did when the railroads were first built through them and the buffaloes galloped along with the cars. The same conditions prevail here save that the game is of a half-dozen big kinds, and most of it is such as one can see only in our zoölogical gardens at home. According to law no shooting may be done for a mile on each side of the track, so that the road has become a great game preserve two miles in width and about six hundred miles long. The animals seem to know that they are safe when they are near the railroad, for most of them are as quiet as our domestic beasts when in the fields.

Let me give you some notes which I made with these wild animals on all sides of me. I copy: “These Kapiti plains are flat and I am riding through vast herds of antelopes and zebras. Some of them are within pistol shot of the cars. There are fifty-odd zebras feeding on the grass not one hundred feet away. Their black and white stripes shine in the sunlight. Their bodies are round, plump, and beautiful. They raise their heads as the train goes by and then continue their grazing. Farther on we see antelopes, some as big as two-year-old calves and others the size of goats. The little ones have horns almost as long as their bodies. There is one variety which has a white patch on its rump. This antelope looks as though it had a baby’s bib tied to its stubby tail or had been splashed with a whitewash brush. Many of the antelopes are yellow or fawn coloured, and some of the smaller ones are beautifully striped.

“Among the most curious animals to be seen are the gnus, which are sometimes called wilde-beeste. As I write this there are some galloping along with the train. They are great beasts as big as a moose, with the horns of a cow and the mane and tail of a horse. Hunting them is good sport.

“But look, there are some ostriches! The flock contains a dozen or more birds, which stand like interrogation points away off there on the plain. They turn toward the cars as we approach, then spread their wings and skim away at great speed. Giraffes are frequently seen. They are more timid than the antelope, and by no means so brave as the zebras.”

All the steel in the bridges on the Uganda Railway was made in the United States and put in place under American direction, because the British bidders wanted three times as long and double the price for the job.

Built primarily to break up the slave-trade in East Africa, the Uganda Railroad has also proved that the natives, under proper direction, can become useful workers. Thousands of them have been employed in the construction and maintenance of the line.

The natives rob the railroad of quantities of wire, which to them is like jewellery. Both men and women load themselves down with pounds of it coiled around their arms, legs, and necks, and even through their ears.