The city is comparatively new. Fifteen or more years ago it had hardly a house. To-day streets have been laid out over an area ten miles in circumference and hundreds of buildings of tin, wood, and stone have been erected. The chief building material is galvanized iron, which is so prevalent that Nairobi has been nicknamed the “tin city.” There are no saw mills or planing mills worth mentioning, as the forests have not been exploited, and about the only lumber available is that brought from the United States and Norway and landed at Mombasa. The ocean freight rates are heavy, and in addition there is the cost of bringing the lumber to Nairobi by railroad. Hence the galvanized iron, which comes here in sheets from England and Belgium. Almost all the buildings are of iron, put up just as it comes from the factory, giving the whole town a silver-gray colour. The post office is of iron, the depot has an iron roof, and the same is true of the governor’s offices. Many of the houses have iron ceilings and iron walls, and the chief retail business section is a collection of one-story iron booths, open at the front, in which Hindus stand or sit surrounded by their goods. My hotel is half iron. The government treasury near by, a shed not over fifteen feet square, is of tin and has a tin roof. I could chop it to pieces with a butcher knife; and the only sign of policing about it is the Negro who, gun in hand, stands outside guarding the door. The office of the land surveyor is of tin, and so are the police headquarters and the house where the supreme court is held. The more fancy dwellings are now being painted, and some stone and brick buildings are rising. The Nairobi of to-day is largely cow pastures. It is a city of magnificent distances. All the places of importance seem to be several miles from each other and the patches between are often grazing ground. The houses are of one and two stories, and are scattered along wide streets which run for an indefinite distance out into the prairie. The chief ways of getting about are on foot, on horseback, or in jinrikishas, the last being by far the most popular. The jinrikishas are much like those used in Japan, save that they are larger and wider. I am told they are made in America. They are pushed and pulled by black Africans, two to each vehicle. One man goes in the shafts and the other pushes behind. They are each clad in a single cotton cloth which flaps back and forth as they run, exposing their nakedness. The streets are unpaved and frequently masses of dust. Along many of them eucalyptus trees have been planted and have grown so rapidly that most of the roads are now shaded by this mournfully drooping foliage.