But the native is the joy, and the never-ceasing delight.  For his benefit is the wide, glittering, colourful, insanitary bazaar, with its dozens of little open-air veranda shops, its “hotels” where he can sit in a real chair and drink real tea, its cafes, and the dark mysteries of its more doubtful amusements.  The bazaar is right in the middle of town, just where it ought not to be, and it is constantly being quarantined, and threatened with removal.  It houses a large population mysteriously, for it is of slight extent.  Then on the borders of town are the two great native villages—­one belonging to the Somalis, and the other hospitably accommodating the swarms of caravan porters and their families.  For, just as in old days Mombasa and Zanzibar used to be the points from which caravans into the interior would set forth, now Nairobi outfits the majority of expeditions.  Probably ten thousand picked natives of various tribes are engaged in the profession.  Of course but a small proportion of this number is ever at home at any one time; but the village is a large one.  Both these villages are built in the native style, of plaster and thatch; have their own headman government—­under supervision—­and are kept pretty well swept out and tidy.  Besides these three main gathering places are many camps and “shambas"[8] scattered everywhere; and the back country counts millions of raw jungle savages, only too glad to drift in occasionally for a look at the metropolis.

At first the newcomer is absolutely bewildered by the variety of these peoples; but after a little he learns to differentiate.  The Somalis are perhaps the first recognizable, with their finely chiselled, intelligent, delicate brown features, their slender forms, and their strikingly picturesque costumes of turbans, flowing robes, and embroidered sleeveless jackets.  Then he learns to distinguish the savage from the sophisticated dweller of the town.  Later comes the identification of the numerous tribes.

The savage comes in just as he has been for, ethnologists alone can guess, how many thousands of years.  He is too old an institution to have been affected as yet by this tiny spot of modernity in the middle of the wilderness.  As a consequence he startles the newcomer even more than the sight of giraffes on the sky-line.

When the shenzi—­wild man—­comes to town he gathers in two or three of his companions, and presents himself as follows:  His hair has been grown quite long, then gathered in three tight pigtails wound with leather, one of which hangs over his forehead, and the other two over his ears.  The entire head he has then anointed with a mixture of castor oil and a bright red colouring earth.  This is wiped away evenly all around the face, about two inches below the hair, to leave a broad, bandlike glistening effect around the entire head.  The ears are most marvellous.  From early youth the lobes have been stretched, until at last they have