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.

For it must not be forgotten that Nairobi, in spite of these things--due
to the direct but slender thread of communication by railroad and
ships--is actually in the middle of an African wilderness--is a black
man's town, as far as numbers go.[6]

The game feeds to its very outskirts, even wanders into the streets at
night.[7] Lions may be heard roaring within a mile or so of town; and
leopards occasionally at night come on the verandas of the outlying
dwellings. Naked savages from the jungle untouched by civilization in
even the minutest particular wander the streets unabashed.

It is this constantly recurring, sharply drawn contrast that gives
Nairobi its piquant charm. As one sits on the broad hotel veranda a