"Giraffes are generally seen browsing in the brush," kept on my companion. "They're sometimes called camelopards, owing to being spotted like a leopard and having a long neck like a camel. See!" he exclaimed, pointing, "there's five of them and a calf." One could scarcely believe his own eyes. Sure enough, there stood five long-necked, brown and white spotted, stubby-horned, slant-backed giraffes and a calf, standing in brush lower than their bodies, 100 feet from the railway track. As the train was passing they turned around and ambled clumsily further into the brush.
"All that game you see to the right are hartebeeste and gazelles," my companion went on. "Keep watching to the left, though, as we may see more giraffes, for that stretch of brush will soon be passed, when there'll be no more chance to see that big game. He's a browser, you know, not a grazer. There are two more—a nice pair!" he added. Sure as you're born, there stood two noble giraffes. Like the group of five with a calf, they turned and hobbled further into the undergrowth. "We're about out of the brush now, so I don't think we'll see more of them," he said. What I had already seen amply offset the $15 exchange charged me at the Zanzibar bank.
Simba was the name of a station as we entered the game fields; the meaning of the word "simba" is lion in the native tongue. More than a score of persons were killed by the king of beasts at this place, it is said, while building the railroad.
"Those smaller animals you see together yonder are a pack of hyena," continued my traveling mate. "There are more zebra to the left. The animals further along are blue wildebeeste (gnu), larger than the South African breed. See the ostrich?" (pointing). There they were, big black and white birds, with wings flopping, running over the plains, not a fence within hundreds of miles—as wild as wild could be.
"We may see a lion before we reach Nairobi; I've seen them on several occasions while traveling over this stretch of country," he added. A lion did not show himself, but, as my companion said, they are frequently seen prowling over the treeless plains from the railroad.
For over a hundred miles the traveler looks out upon great herds of game feeding on both sides of the railway track. Gazelles have become so tame that they sometimes keep grazing as the train passes by; and the hartebeeste, or kongonie, much larger than the gazelle, with a wedge-shaped head and an outline of body resembling the giraffe, is nearly as numerous as the clean-cut, nimble gazelle. The wildebeeste is seen feeding and swishing his tail as contentedly as a cow in a pasture. Ostriches and zebras are on their native heath. Tigers, and other game also, may be seen while traveling through this most interesting stretch of country.
These plains, like an American prairie, are free of timber; and as far as the eye can see, from 50 feet off the railway track—to the horizon, in fact,—from Makindu to Nairobi, over a hundred miles, the eye feasts on a sportsman's paradise.
We reached Nairobi 23 hours after leaving Mombasa, 327 miles separating the chief port and the capital. What a terrible mixture of blacks was congregated on the platform and about the railway station! They were as numerous and black as flies around a barrel of molasses on a hot day. We were certainly in Darkest Africa. The ricksha is the hack of Nairobi. One starts for his hotel, with a native in the shafts and another pushing, a jingle-jangle taking place all the while. The pullers, while less fantastic and grotesque than their Zulu brothers in Durban, still have distinctiveness, namely, in wearing small bells about ankles and arms; the tinkle from these is constantly heard about the streets. For some distance from the station one is drawn along a level road, bordered with eucalyptus trees, to the business center. Wood and iron buildings—corrugated iron—are mostly used in both dwelling houses and business places. There is no paving on the streets, no sidewalks, nothing inviting, about the capital of the British-East Africa Protectorate; but there is no grass growing on the streets, every one seemingly infused with a "boom" spirit. One finds, however, in this place a good, stone-built post office, a stone-built Treasury building, and structures of the same material under course of construction.
Nairobi was the blackest town visited. Though considerable building was being done, a white man—such as carpenter, mason, plasterer or bricklayer—was not seen engaged at that class of work, all labor being done by Indians; most of the contractors also were Indians. The wages paid these blacks are from $1 to $1.25 a day. Natives carrying the hod, or bucket, rather, are paid from 6 to 12 cents a day.
Mention was made in Leg Four of Suva, Fiji, having a daily newspaper, by reason of two tri-weeklies appearing on alternate days. In Nairobi, however, two daily newspapers appear on six mornings of the week, and besides these there are also weekly and monthly publications issued. Together with local news, brief cable dispatches are printed, enough to keep one in touch with important events taking place over the world. Even linotype machines are found in that sparsely settled, out-of-the-way place. The Indian here, as everywhere, when he gets a foothold, has the printing trade killed in so far as a white man getting good wages is concerned. He sets type after a fashion for $15 to $18 a month.