THE UGANDA RAILWAY
Travelling by railway through the wilds of East Africa! Steaming for
hundreds of miles among zebras, gnus, ostriches, and giraffes! Rolling
along through jungles which are the haunts of the rhinoceros and where
the lion and the leopard wait for their prey! These were some of my
experiences during my trip over the Uganda Railway from Mombasa to
Nairobi.
Only a few years ago it took a month to cover the distance between these
two points. To-day I made it in less than twenty-four hours, and that
in a comfortable car. The railroad fare, travelling first-class, was
fifty-eight rupees, which at normal exchange would total about thirty
dollars, and I had good meals on the way. The distance is over three
hundred miles, just about half the length of the railroad.
Wood-burning locomotives of the American type are largely used. The
maximum scheduled speed is twenty-five miles an hour. Trains leave
Mombasa daily for Nairobi and three times a week for Kisumu on Lake
Victoria, which is five hundred and eighty-four miles from Mombasa.
Leaving Mombasa, our train carried us across a great steel bridge to the
mainland, and we climbed through a jungle up to the plateau. We passed
baobab trees, with trunks like hogsheads, bursting out at the top into
branches. They made me think of the frog who tried to blow himself to
the size of a bull and exploded in the attempt. We went through coconut
groves, by mango trees loaded with fruit, and across plantations of
bananas, whose long green leaves quivered in the breeze made by the train
as it passed. Now we saw a gingerbread palm, and now strange flowers and
plants, the names of which we did not know. As we went upward we could
see the strait that separates Mombasa from the mainland, and higher still
caught a view of the broad expanse of the Indian Ocean. For the first one
hundred miles the climb is almost steady, and we were about one third of
a mile above the sea when we reached the station at Voi. Here the country
is more open, and far off in the distance one can see a patch of snow
floating like a cloud. That patch is the mountain of Kilimanjaro, the top
of which is more than nineteen thousand feet above the sea. It is the
loftiest mountain on the continent yet is not much higher than Mt. Kenya,
that other giant of British East Africa, which rises out of the plateau
some distance north of Nairobi.
After the jungle of the coast line, the country becomes comparatively
open and soon begins to look like parts of America where the woods have
been cut away and the brush allowed to grow up in the fields. Here the
land is carpeted with grass about a foot or so high. Thousands of square
miles of such grass are going to waste. I saw no stock to speak of, and
at that place but little wild game. Without knowing anything about the
tsetse fly and other cattle pests, I should say that the pastures just
back of the coast might feed many thousands of cattle and hogs. The soil
seems rich. It is a fat clay, the colour of well-burnt brick, which turns
everything red. The dust filled our car; it coated our faces, and crept
through our clothes. When we attempted to wash, the water soon became a
bright vermilion, and the towels upon which we dried were brick-red. My
pillow, after I had travelled all night through such dust, had changed
from white to terracotta, and there was a Venetian red spot where my head
had lain. The wisest travellers cleansed eyes and nostrils several times
a day with an antiseptic solution.
It is a strange thing to go to sleep in the woods and then awake to
find one’s self rolling over a high, treeless country with game by the
thousand gambolling along the car tracks. We awoke on the Kapiti plains,
which are about a mile above the sea and two hundred and sixty-eight
miles from Mombasa. These plains are of a black sandy loam and covered
with a thick grass. They look much as Iowa, Kansas, or Nebraska did when
the railroads were first built through them and the buffaloes galloped
along with the cars. The same conditions prevail here save that the game
is of a half-dozen big kinds, and most of it is such as one can see only
in our zoölogical gardens at home. According to law no shooting may be
done for a mile on each side of the track, so that the road has become
a great game preserve two miles in width and about six hundred miles
long. The animals seem to know that they are safe when they are near the
railroad, for most of them are as quiet as our domestic beasts when in
the fields.
Let me give you some notes which I made with these wild animals on all
sides of me. I copy: “These Kapiti plains are flat and I am riding
through vast herds of antelopes and zebras. Some of them are within
pistol shot of the cars. There are fifty-odd zebras feeding on the grass
not one hundred feet away. Their black and white stripes shine in the
sunlight. Their bodies are round, plump, and beautiful. They raise their
heads as the train goes by and then continue their grazing. Farther on
we see antelopes, some as big as two-year-old calves and others the size
of goats. The little ones have horns almost as long as their bodies.
There is one variety which has a white patch on its rump. This antelope
looks as though it had a baby’s bib tied to its stubby tail or had been
splashed with a whitewash brush. Many of the antelopes are yellow or fawn
coloured, and some of the smaller ones are beautifully striped.
“Among the most curious animals to be seen are the gnus, which are
sometimes called wilde-beeste. As I write this there are some galloping
along with the train. They are great beasts as big as a moose, with the
horns of a cow and the mane and tail of a horse. Hunting them is good
sport.
“But look, there are some ostriches! The flock contains a dozen or more
birds, which stand like interrogation points away off there on the plain.
They turn toward the cars as we approach, then spread their wings and
skim away at great speed. Giraffes are frequently seen. They are more
timid than the antelope, and by no means so brave as the zebras.”
[Illustration: All the steel in the bridges on the Uganda Railway was
made in the United States and put in place under American direction,
because the British bidders wanted three times as long and double the
price for the job.]
[Illustration: Built primarily to break up the slave-trade in East
Africa, the Uganda Railroad has also proved that the natives, under
proper direction, can become useful workers. Thousands of them have been
employed in the construction and maintenance of the line.]
[Illustration: The natives rob the railroad of quantities of wire, which
to them is like jewellery. Both men and women load themselves down with
pounds of it coiled around their arms, legs, and necks, and even through
their ears.]
The Uganda Railway begins at the Indian Ocean and climbs over some of
the roughest parts of the African continent before it ends at Lake
Victoria, one of the two greatest fresh-water lakes of the world. Leaving
the seacoast, the rise is almost continuous until it reaches the high
plains of Kenya Colony. Here at Nairobi, where this chapter is written,
I am more than a mile above the sea, and, about fifteen miles farther
on at the station of Kikuyu, the road reaches an altitude seven hundred
feet above the top of Mt. Washington. From there the ascent is steady
to a point a mile and a half above the sea. Then there is a great drop
into a wide, ditch-like valley two thousand feet deep. Crossing this
valley, the railway again rises until it is far higher than any mountain
in the United States east of the Rockies. It attains an elevation of
eighty-three hundred feet, and then falls down to Lake Victoria, which is
just about as high as the highest of the Alleghanies. The line was built
by the British Government in less than five years and has cost altogether
some thirty-five million dollars. It has a gauge of forty inches, rails
which weigh fifty pounds to the yard, and tracks which are well laid and
well ballasted. In an average year almost two hundred and fifty thousand
tons of goods and five hundred thousand passengers are carried over it,
and its earnings are more than its operating expenses.
It does not yet pay any interest on the capital invested, but it is of
enormous value in the way of opening up, developing, and protecting the
country. It was not constructed as a commercial project but to combat the
slave trade which flourished beyond the reach of the British warships.
To-day the Uganda line is the dominant influence of Kenya Colony.
Among the most interesting features are the American bridges, which
cross all the great ravines between Nairobi and Lake Victoria. Every
bit of steel and every bolt and rivet in them was made by American
workmen in American factories, and taken out here and put up under
the superintendence of Americans. This was because of John Bull’s
desire to have the work done quickly and cheaply and at the same time
substantially. While he had been laying the tracks from here to the sea
our bridge companies had surprised the English by putting up the steel
viaduct across the Atbara River in the Sudan within a much shorter time
and far more cheaply than the best British builders could possibly do.
Therefore, when the British Government asked for bids for these Uganda
bridges, they sent the plans and specifications to the English and to
some of our American firms as well. The best British bids provided that
the shops should have two or three years to make the steel work, and
longer still to erect it in Africa. The American Bridge Company offered
to complete the whole job within seven months after the foundations were
laid, and that at a charge of ninety dollars per ton, to be paid when all
was in place and in working order. This price was about half that of the
British estimates and the time was less than one third that in which the
eight bridges already constructed had been built, so the American company
got the contract. It carried it out to the letter, and had the government
done its part, the work would have been completed in the time specified.
Owing to delays of one kind and another, it really consumed five months
longer, but it was all done within the space of one year, which was just
about half the time that the British contractors asked to get their goods
ready for shipment.
The English were surprised at how easily and quickly the Americans
carried out their contract and how little they seemed to make of it.
A. B. Lueder, the civil engineer who was sent out to take charge of
the construction, was little more than a boy and had graduated at
Cornell University only a year or so before. There were about twenty
bridge builders and foremen from different parts of the United States,
and a Pennsylvania man named Jarrett who acted as superintendent of
construction. Arriving at Mombasa in December, 1900, these men had
completed their work before the following Christmas. They acted merely as
superintendents and fancy workmen. All the rough labour was done by East
Indians and native Africans, furnished by the British. When the road was
started, the government planned to use only Africans, but finding this
impossible, they imported twenty thousand coolies from India. The coolies
came on contracts of from two to five years, at wages of from four to
fifteen dollars a month and rations. The native labourers were paid about
ten cents a day.
Before the workmen from the United States arrived here a large part of
the bridge material was already in Mombasa. The Americans left one man
there to see that additional materials were forwarded promptly, and came
at once to the scene of action. They put up the bridges at the rate
of something like one a week, and constructed the longest viaduct in
sixty-nine and one half working hours.
What they did forms one of the wonders of civil and mechanical
engineering. The bridge material was so made that its pieces fitted
together like clockwork, notwithstanding the fact that it was put into
shape away off here, thousands of miles from the place of construction
and in one of the most uncivilized parts of the world. The materials in
the viaducts included about half a million feet of southern pine lumber
and over thirteen million pounds of steel. The steel was in more than one
hundred thousand pieces and the heaviest piece weighed five tons. The
average weight was about one hundred pounds. The greatest care had to be
taken to keep the parts together and in their own places. Every piece
was numbered and those of different bridges were painted in different
colours. At that, it was hard to keep all the parts together, for, since
most of the natives here look upon steel as so much jewellery, it was all
but impossible to keep them from filching some of the smaller pieces for
ear bobs and telegraph wire to make into bracelets.
Besides all the other tremendous difficulties in building this road,
there were the wild beasts. There are a hundred places along it where
one might get off and start up a lion. Rhinoceroses have butted the
freight cars along the track, and infest much of the country through
which it goes. I was shown a station yesterday where twenty-nine
Hindus were carried off by two man-eating lions. Night after night the
man-eaters came, taking away each time one or two of the workmen from the
construction camp. They were finally killed by an English overseer, who
sat up with his gun and watched for them.
It was not far from this station of Nairobi that a man was taken out of
a special car while it stopped overnight on the side track. The windows
and doors of the car had been left open for air, and the three men who
were its only inmates had gone to sleep. Two were in the berths while
the other, who had sat up to watch, was on the floor with his gun on his
knees. As the night went on he fell asleep, and woke to find himself
under the belly of a lion. The beast had slipped in through the door,
and, jumping over him, seized the man in the lower berth and leaped out
of the window, carrying him along. The other two men followed, but they
failed to discover the lion that night. The bones of the man, picked
clean, were found the next day.
An interesting “by-product” of the construction of the Uganda road has
been the development of the native labourer. Twenty years ago the saying
was: “Native labour is of little value, no dependence can be placed upon
it, and even famine fails to force the tribesmen to seek work.” To-day
that opinion has yielded to the belief that, if he is properly trained
and educated to it, the native can supply labour, skilled and unskilled,
for all manufacturing and industrial enterprises of Kenya Colony.
Remarkable progress in industrial education is shown by the nine thousand
African workers on the Uganda line.