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. This brief fleeting quarter
hour of glory is unique and passes. It is like crossing the Line, or the
first kiss, something that in its nature cannot be repeated.

The cab was once a noble vehicle, compounded of opulent curves, with a
very high driver's box in front, a little let-down bench, and a deep,
luxurious, shell-shaped back seat, reclining in which one received the
adulation of the populace. That was in its youth. Now in its age the
varnish is gone; the upholstery of the back seat frayed; the upholstery
of the small seat lacking utterly, so that one sits on bare boards. In
place of two dignifiedly spirited fat white horses, it is drawn by two
very small mules in a semi-detached position far ahead. And how it
rattles!

Between the station and the hotel at Nairobi is a long straight wide
well-made street, nearly a mile long, and bordered by a double row of