THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY down on each side, so that they flap this way and that in the breeze. Some wear breech cloths, and not a few are bare to the waist. In the early morning, when the air is still sharp, many of these people, clad in red flannel blan¬ kets, go stalking along with their legs uncovered to the thighs. I have already spoken of the ear plugs. Some have the holes in the lobes of their ears so stretched that I can put my fist through them. The loops are so long that when a man takes out his ear plug he hangs the loop of skin over the top of his ear to prevent its catching on something and tearing. The loop looks just like a leather strap about as wide as one’s little finger nail. I have handled many of them, twisting them this way and that to be sure they were genuine.

The African smell is everywhere. It burdens the air of the market places, and I verily think it might be chopped up into blocks and sold as a new kind of phosphate. The natives cover themselves with hair oil and body grease, and the combination of this when it turns rancid with the natural effluvia which exhales from their persons is in¬ describable. Some of the blacks smear their faces with a mixture of grease and red clay, and cover their hair with the same material, so that they look more like copper Indians than Africans.

These Africans do all the hard work of Nairobi. They are hewers of wood and drawers of water. I see scores of them, carrying baskets of dirt on their heads and bundles of wood on their backs and pushing and pulling carts and wagons through the streets. Most of my trips from one place to another are made in two-wheeled carts hauled by wire-bedecked natives.

The retail business is done by East Indians, as is also 255