The stone veranda of that hotel is a very interesting place.  Here gather men from all parts of East Africa, from Uganda, and the jungles of the Upper Congo.  At one time or another all the famous hunters drop into its canvas chairs—­Cunninghame, Allan Black, Judd, Outram, Hoey, and the others; white traders with the natives of distant lands; owners of farms experimenting bravely on a greater or lesser scale in a land whose difficulties are just beginning to be understood; great naturalists and scientists from the governments of the earth, eager to observe and collect this interesting and teeming fauna; and sportsmen just out and full of interest, or just returned and modestly important.  More absorbing conversation can be listened to on this veranda than in any other one place in the world.  The gathering is cosmopolitan; it is representative of the most active of every social, political, and racial element; it has done things; it contemplates vital problems from the vantage ground of experience.  The talk veers from pole to pole—­and returns always to lions.

Every little while a native—­a raw savage—­comes along and takes up a stand just outside the railing.  He stands there mute and patient for five minutes—­a half hour—­until some one, any one, happens to notice him.

“N’jo!—­come here!” commands this person.

The savage silently proffers a bit of paper on which is written the name of the one with whom he has business.

“Nenda officie!” indicates the charitable person waving his hand towards the hotel office.

Then, and not until this permission has been given by some one, dares the savage cross the threshold to do his errand.

If the messenger happens to be a trained houseboy, however, dressed in his uniform of khaki or his more picturesque white robe and cap, he is privileged to work out his own salvation.  And behind the hotel are rows and rows of other boys, each waiting patiently the pleasure of his especial bwana lounging at ease after strenuous days.  At the drawling shout of “boy!” one of them instantly departs to find out which particular boy is wanted.

The moment any white man walks to the edge of the veranda a half-dozen of the rickshaws across the street career madly around the corners of the fence, bumping, colliding, careening dangerously, to drop beseechingly in serried confusion close around the step.  The rickshaw habit is very strong in Nairobi.  If a man wants to go a hundred yards down the street he takes a rickshaw for that stupendous journey.  There is in justification the legend that the white man should not exert himself in the tropics.  I fell into the custom of the country until I reflected that it would hardly be more fatal to me to walk a half-hour in the streets of Nairobi than to march six or seven hours—­as I often did—­when on safari or in the hunting field.  After that I got a little exercise, to the vast scandal of the rickshaw boys.  In fact, so unusual was my performance that at first I had fairly to clear myself a way with my kiboko.  After a few experiences they concluded me a particularly crazy person and let me alone.