What they could interfere with in a practically horseless town I cannot
imagine, but I trust this stupidity gave way to second thought.
The cab rattles and careers up the length of the street, scattering
rickshaws and pedestrians from before its triumphant path. To the left
opens a wide street of little booths under iron awnings, hung with gay
colour and glittering things. The street is thronged from side to side
with natives of all sorts. It whirls past, and shortly after the cab
dashes inside a fence and draws up before the low stone-built,
wide-verandahed hotel.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The Government does much nowadays by means of tank cars.
XIV.
A TOWN OF CONTRASTS.
It has been, as I have said, the fashion to speak of Nairobi as an ugly
little town. This was probably true when the first corrugated iron
houses huddled unrelieved near the railway station. It is not true now.
The lower part of town is well planted, and is always picturesque as
long as its people are astir. The white population have built in the
wooded hills some charming bungalows surrounded by bright flowers or
lost amid the trunks of great trees. From the heights on which is
Government House one can, with a glass, watch the game herds feeding on
the plains. Two clubs, with the usual games of golf, polo,
tennis--especially tennis--football and cricket; a weekly hunt, with
jackals instead of foxes; a bungalow town club on the slope of a hill;
an electric light system; a race track; a rifle range; frilly parasols
and the latest fluffiest summer toilettes from London and Paris--I
mention a few of the refinements of civilization that offer to the
traveller some of the most piquant of contrasts.
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