The wonder of
the extraordinary abundance of these wild animals mounts as the hours
slip by. At the stops for water or for orders the passengers gather from
their different compartments to detail excitedly to each other what they
have seen. There is always an honest superenthusiast who believes he has
seen rhinoceroses, lions, or leopards. He is looked upon with envy by
the credulous, and with exasperation by all others.
So the little train puffs and tugs along. Suddenly it happens on a
barbed wire fence, and immediately after enters the town of Nairobi. The
game has persisted right up to that barbed wire fence.
The station platform is thronged with a heterogeneous multitude of
people. The hands of a dozen raggetty black boys are stretched out for
luggage. The newcomer sees with delight a savage with a tin can in his
stretched ear lobe; another with a set of wooden skewers set fanwise
around the edge of the ear; he catches a glimpse of a beautiful naked
creature very proud, very decorated with beads and heavy polished wire.
Then he is ravished away by the friend, or agent, or hotel
representative who has met him, and hurried out through the gates
between the impassive and dignified Sikh sentries to the cab. I believe
nobody but the newcomer ever rides in the cab; and then but once, from
the station to the hotel. After that he uses rickshaws. In fact it is
probable that the cab is maintained for the sole purpose of giving the
newcomer a grand and impressive entrance.
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