Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

Nairobi promises to become one of the railroad centres of this part of the world. It is the chief station between the Indian Ocean and Lake Victoria, and a road is now proposed from here to Mt. Kenya. The Uganda Railway goes through some of the poorest country in the colony, and the Mt. Kenya road will open up a rich agricultural region which is thickly populated by tribes more than ordinarily industrious. The railroad shops are here, and the employees have a large collection of tin cottages for their homes. The headquarters of the railroad, where the chief officers stay, are one-story tin buildings. The telegraphic offices are connected with them.

Both railroad and telegraph are run by the government. The telegraphic rates are comparatively low. Far off here in the jungles of Africa one can send messages much more cheaply than in the United States. A message of eight words from here to Uganda costs thirty-three cents, and one can telegraph to London about as cheaply as from New York to San Francisco. This is so notwithstanding the difficulty which the linemen have to keep up the wires, which the jewellery-loving natives steal. During the Nandi rebellion, forty-odd miles of it were carried away and never recovered, and in one of the provinces adjoining Uganda, above Lake Victoria, the natives are so crazy after the copper wire there used that it is almost impossible to keep the lines in shape.

Another serious danger to the telegraph is the big game. The giraffes reach up and play with the brackets and pull the wire this way and that. At Naivasha the hippopotami have once or twice butted down the poles, and I hear they have been doing considerable damage to the lines along the coast near the Tana River. In the heart of Uganda the monkeys have a way of swinging on the wires and twisting them together, which stops the transmission of messages, so that the way of the lineman is indeed hard.

CHAPTER XXXII
JOHN BULL IN EAST AFRICA

I have just had a long talk with Mr. Frederick J. Jackson, the acting governor and commander-in-chief of this big territory which John Bull owns in the heart of East Africa. Mr. Jackson came out here to hunt big game years ago, and he has been on the ground from that time to this. He has long been employed by the British Government in the administration of Uganda and of the protectorate of East Africa, and he is now lieutenant-governor in the absence of Colonel Sadler, the acting governor of the country.

Let me give you some idea of this vast region which the British are opening up in the midst of the black continent. This country altogether is larger than the combined states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. It has a population of four million natives, most of whom not so long ago were warring with one another. Some of the tribes made their living by preying upon their neighbours. Slavery was everywhere common, and one of the great slave routes to the coast was not far from the line where the Uganda railway now runs. To-day all these evils have been done away with. The warlike tribes have been conquered, and are turning their attention to stock raising and farming. Slavery has been practically abolished, and peace prevails everywhere. The whole country is now kept in good order by only about eighteen hundred police and less than two thousand English and East Indian soldiers. A large part of the region along the line of the railroad has been divided into ranches and farms. Small towns are springing up here and there, and in time the greater part of the plateau will be settled.

There is no doubt that white men can live here. The children I see are rosy with health, and the farmers claim that, with care, they are as well as they were when back home in England. There are some Europeans here who have had their homes on the highlands for over twelve years, and they report that the climate is healthful and invigorating. They are able to work out of doors from six until ten o’clock in the morning and from three to six o’clock in the afternoon, and during a part of the year all the day through. As a rule, however, the sun is so hot at midday that one should not go out unless his head is well protected. The heat here is dry. The nights are usually so cool that a blanket is needed. Notwithstanding the fact that we are almost on the Equator, at any altitude above eight thousand feet ice may be found in the early morning. Nearer the coast the land drops and the climate is tropical. For two hundred miles back from the Indian Ocean there are practically no white settlers, except at Mombasa, for it is only on this high plateau that they are as yet attempting to live.

But let me continue my description in the words of the man who governs the country. My conversation took place in a long, blue, iron-roofed building known as the Commissioner’s office, situated on the hill above Nairobi. I had asked as to the colony’s future. Mr. Jackson replied:

“It is all problematical. We have an enormous territory and millions of people. We have not yet prospected the country, nor have we dealt long enough with the natives to know what we can do with the people. We have really no idea as yet as to just what our resources are, or the labour we can secure to exploit them.”