On The Way I Was Lucky Enough To Get Some Fine Views Of Kilima N'jaro, The Whole Mountain From Base To Summit Standing Out Clearly And Grandly, With The Lofty Peak Of Kibo Topping The Fleecy Clouds With Its Snowy Head.

At Machakos Road I found the country and the climate very different from that to which I had grown accustomed at Tsavo.

Here I could see for miles across stretches of beautiful, open downs, timbered here and there like an English park; and it was a great relief to be able to overlook a wide tract of country and to feel that I was no longer hemmed in on all sides by the interminable and depressing thorny wilderness. As Machakos Road is some four thousand feet higher above the sea level than Tsavo, the difference in temperature was also very marked, and the air felt fresh and cool compared with that of the sun-baked valley in which I had spent the previous year.

My instructions were to hurry on the construction of the line as fast as possible to Nairobi, the proposed headquarters of the Railway Administration, which lay about fifty miles further on across the Athi Plains; and I soon began to find platelaying most interesting work. Everything has to move as if by clockwork. First the earth surface has to be prepared and rendered perfectly smooth and level; cuttings have to be made and hollows banked up; tunnels have to be bored through hills and bridges thrown across rivers.

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