One of the principal tasks of the Freeland government, and one in which, as
a rule, the ministries for art and science and for public works
co-operated, was the thorough investigation and survey of our new home:
first of the narrower district of the Kenia, and then of the neighbouring
regions with which we were continually coming into closer relationship. The
orographic and hydrographic systems of the whole country were determined;
the soil and the climate were minutely examined. In doing this, both the
higher scientific standpoint and that of prosaic utility were kept in view.
For scientific purposes there was constructed an accurate map of the whole
of the Masai and Kikuyu territories, showing most of the geographical
details. All the more prominent eminences were measured and ascended, the
Kenia not excepted.
The view from the Kenia is magnificent above measure; but, apart from the
mountain itself and its glaciers, it offers little variety. In a circle, as
far as the eye can reach, spreads a most fertile country, intersected by
numerous watercourses, which nowhere, except in a great trough-like basin
of about 1,900 square miles in extent in the north-west, give rise to
swamps. The most striking feature of the whole region is the tableland
falling away in a number of terraces, and broken by the shoulders of
massive hills. The foot-hills proper of the Kenia begin with the highest
terrace, where they form a girdle of varying breadth and height around the
central mass of the mountain, which rises with a steep abrupt outline. This
central mass, at a height of from 16,000 to 18,000 feet, bears a number of
gigantic glacier-fields, from the midst of which the peak rises abruptly,
flanked at some distance by a yet steeper, but small, horn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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