, in blanket ear ornaments and all
the fixings, armed with a long lashed whip and raucous voice. At
any given moment he was likely to hop out over the moving wheel, run
forward, bat the off leading mule, and hop back again, all with the
most extraordinary agility. He likewise hurled what sounded like very
opprobrious epithets at such natives as did not get out the way quickly
enough to suit him. The expression of his face, which was that of a
person steeped in woe, never changed.

We rattled out of Nairobi at a great pace, and swung into the Fort Hall
Road. This famous thoroughfare, one of the three or four made roads in
all East Africa, is about sixty miles long. It is a strategic necessity
but is used by thousands of natives on their way to see the sights of
the great metropolis. As during the season there is no water for much of
the distance, a great many pay for their curiosity with their lives. The
road skirts the base of the hills, winding in and out of shallow canyons
and about the edges of rounded hills. To the right one can see far out
across the Athi Plains.

We met an almost unbroken succession of people. There were long pack
trains of women, quite cheerful, bent over under the weight of firewood
or vegetables, many with babies tucked away in the folds of their
garments; mincing dandified warriors with poodle-dog hair, skewers in
their ears, their jewelery brought to a high polish a fatuous expression
of self-satisfaction on their faces, carrying each a section of
sugarcane which they now used as a staff but would later devour for
lunch; bearers, under convoy of straight soldierly red-sashed Sudanese,
transporting Government goods; wild-eyed staring shenzis from the
forest, with matted hair and goatskin garments, looking ready to bolt
aside at the slightest alarm; coveys of marvellous and giggling damsels,
their fine-grained skin anointed and shining with red oil, strung with
beads and shells, very coquettish and sure of their feminine charm;
naked small boys marching solemnly like their elders; camel trains from
far-off Abyssinia or Somaliland under convoy of white-clad turbaned
grave men of beautiful features; donkey safaris in charge of dirty
degenerate looking East Indians carrying trade goods to some distant
post-all these and many more, going one way or the other, drew one side,
at the sight of our white faces, to let us pass.

About two o'clock we suddenly turned off from the road, apparently quite