Uganda Railway Research Articles

Ruin of Empire

This article is concerned with the memory of the Uganda Railway in Kenya. Built during the heyday of British imperialism at the end of the nineteenth century, the colonial railway has been a highly contested infrastructure. Drawing on museum exhibitions, public speeches, and publications, the article argues that the main narrative of the railway line as a tool of oppression began to change when the railway infrastructure gradually deteriorated in the mid-twentieth century. I show how three distinct groups (white expatriates, Kenyan-Asians, and Kenya’s political elite) were involved in creating a new public memory that popularized the Uganda Railway as a cornerstone of the postcolonial nation. Their uncoordinated but simultaneous efforts toward a new reading of the past all aimed, albeit for different reasons, at reimagining the nation. The article thus shows mechanisms of coming to terms with the colonial past in a postcolonial nation.

Infrastructural territorialisations: Mega-infrastructures and the (re)making of Kenya

This paper, based on historical and contemporary dynamics of railway infrastructures in Kenya, analyses how mega-infrastructures are central in state practices of infrastructural territorialisation – an infrastructure-based production of territoriality as a historically and geographically specific form of spatio-political order and organisation, imbued with social tensions, stemming from the state-led imposition of a techno-politics onto its territory. Focusing on territorial and political objectives of the state advanced through the Uganda Railway and the Standard Gauge Railway, the paper demonstrates how both of these projects have been central in colonial and contemporary practices of infrastructural territorialisation, albeit in mercurial ways that do not fully represent original techno-political intensions of the state. This discussion, first, highlights how megaprojects – although primarily analysed by recent geographical scholarship as advancing contemporary geographies of global capitalism – also contingently coalesce with state (re)territorialisation practices. Second, undertaking these analyses in the Kenyan context, the paper shows how, despite shared historical dynamics of contingent state territorialisation – and the reconstitution of racial and socio-economic inequalities, advanced through megaprojects that in Kenya are socially interpreted through historical experiences of colonialism – current infrastructural territorialisations are also different; whilst the colonial territorialisation of Kenya emerged as relatively unchallenged, its present state territory-making is undermined by both the global character of megaprojects and the external actors that the state relies on for its practices of infrastructural territorialisation.

Building on the ruins of empire: the Uganda Railway and the LAPSSET corridor in Kenya

This article explores colonial (dis-)continuities between the planned Lamu Port–South Sudan–Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) development corridor and the Uganda Railway (UR). The historical approach to infrastructure studies highlights the effects of large-scale infrastructures beyond their immediate material impact, and reveals their potential power to structure mobilities, historicities and politics of scale. With reference to relational theories, it is argued that the two projects gain their respective significance not only through their ability to connect distant places, but also by blocking and severing other competing ways of being mobile. Particularly, both infrastructure projects create technologies enabling easier and faster flow of capital and commodities but limit previously prevalent mobilities practised by caravans and semi-nomadic people in the region. Both projects, furthermore, produce particular ways of remembering the past and anticipating the future. The article identifies a major discontinuity in the politics of scale they respectively imply: while the UR aimed at producing a clear scalar hierarchy between empire and colony, the LAPSSET alleges to dissolve hard boundaries between scalar instances. This article is based on qualitative data collected during fieldwork along the proposed route of the LAPSSET corridor, as well as archive work regarding the UR.

Working With the Commercial Motorists to Promote Cancer Awareness

Background and context: Motorcycle transport system also known as “BodaBoda”' is one of Uganda's commonest means of transport with over 10,000 motorists ridding on the streets of Kampala on daily basis according to the statistics from Kampala City Authority. HealthAid Uganda (HAU) strategically engaged the above group in to promotion of cancer awareness, screening and blood donation for cancer patients following the lack of blood at the cancer institute for cancer patients. The process was strengthened by working in partnership with the Uganda Bodaboda Association 2010, an umbrella association that brings all the motorists together. It also included the Uganda Police Services, Ministry of Health and the private sector. Aim: To use motorists to deliver cancer education, awareness and facilitate blood donation for cancer patients in Uganda. Strategy/Tactics: The event was branded with the theme “Know your health, donate blood, save life”. It involved mobilization of the motorcycle riders through the BodaBoda 2010 association, a cancer awareness motorcycle ride across Kampala City, led by the head of traffic Uganda police as the chief rider. This was conducted along Kampala road and finally convened on the Uganda railway grounds, where the event was crowned with cancer education, screening and blood donation for the cancer patients. Program/Policy process: Community involvement and advocacy. Outcomes: There were large number of motorcycle riders 1000 who passionately turned up for the community event, high expectations to know about cancer and being able to go with cancer education materials for their families and communities. Blood bank collection team declared collecting 400 units of blood. The head, Department of Non Communicable Diseases at the Ministry of Health appreciated the efforts of HAU and pledged that the MOH will strongly work and support HAU on the initiative. The event attracted over 1500 individuals both the motorcycle riders and the community. What was learned: Using popular service groups has a high success rate in delivering cancer awareness and screening services to the least households in the community. HAU's success in this strategy was accelerated by the principle in which it focuses on working with organized groups so as to reach the households with cancer information and empower them to be able to make best choices. HAU looks further to extending the same activities to other communities of similar nature.

Evolution and Measurement of Institutions in Kenya

Abstract This article presents the de jure political and economic institutional indicators for Kenya for the period 1884–2010, and discusses their evolution over time. The construction of these indicators is based on the leximetric framework proposed by Fedderke et al. (2001), which relies on the formal legislative history that governs immovable property, political rights, and civil liberties. In doing so, we are able to capture the notion of permanency that characterizes institutions according to Douglass North. We provide a narrative that demonstrates how existing political and economic rights in Kenya were largely shaped by the legal framework introduced by the British settlers since 1884. These laws were initially designed to create a settler economy in order to recoup the heavy investments cost of the Uganda railway. To this end, the colonial authorities promoted a liberal freehold property rights system for the benefit of the settlers while curtailing the indigenous populations’ basic civil liberties and customary rights to land. We correlate these newly constructed indexes with conventional institutional indicators for overlapping periods. Overall, we find high unconditional correlations, which suggests that our indicators may be fairly reliable even in the long run (126 years).

Geographical imagination and technological connectivity in East Africa

This paper analyses and compares two transformative moments of technologically mediated change in East Africa, the construction of the Uganda railway between Mombasa and Lake Victoria (1896–1903) and the introduction of fibre‐optic cables that landed into the ports of Dar Es Salaam and Mombasa in 2009. The paper uses discourse analysis to examine how technologically mediated connectivity has been represented by political and economic actors during these transformative moments. In both cases we explore the origins of the expectations of connectivity and the hope and fear associated with them. Building on Massey's notion of power‐geometry and Sheppard's concept of positionality, the paper focuses on power relationships in discussions of connectivity and asks how people understand the abilities of transformative technologies to modify positionalities and alter relational distance and proximity. Ultimately, by examining historical and contemporary expectations of connectivity in East Africa, this paper works towards more grounded and historicised understandings of the coming‐together of technology and connectivity.

AFRICA IN INDIAN INK: URDU ARTICULATIONS OF INDIAN SETTLEMENT IN EAST AFRICA

ABSTRACTThis article examines an Urdu travelogue written in 1901 to analyze the discursive frameworks by which Africa was rendered knowable to Indian settlers. As a vernacular ethnography written for a readership of Punjabi migrants associated with the Uganda Railway, the travelogue provides our earliest direct evidence of colonial Indian attitudes towards the peoples and landscapes of East Africa. Envisioning the region as at once an imperial and Islamic settlement zone, the travelogue documents the emergence of an ‘imperial-Islamicate’ discourse that incorporated both littoral and interior East Africa into an industrializing oceanic culture area.

Merchant-kings and Everymen: Narratives of the South Asian Diaspora of East Africa

The building of the Uganda railway at the turn of the nineteenth century brought about radical shifts in the notion of territory and the conception of time within East Africa. A sense of Indian Ocean continuity and cosmopolitanism signified by the pace of the dhow and the seaward perspective of coastal communities was substantially replaced by a new sense of time and territory determined by the speed of the train and the inland focus of colonial ambition. This paper explores this long moment of transition through a number of texts: the first year of the East African Standard (1902–03), the journal of Ebrahimji Noorbhai Adamji (1902–05) and three recent novels. These texts delineate the role of the South Asian diaspora in both the expansion of the colonial economy and the maintenance of an older sensibility. The founder of the African Standard, Alibhai Mulla Jeevanjee, held the contract for the recruitment of indentured labourers for the building of the railway and financed the establishment of Nairobi. While his newspaper displays complicity with colonial projects, it also reveals the disparity between the overtly expansive ideals and the narrowly national/racial aims of the empire. In Adamji's journal, the oscillation between the use of British time and Arbi – the Arabic Swahili system of time – is a notable imprecision that signifies the writer's position on a cusp between the world of coastal trade and life under colonial rule. Beneath the biographies of businessmen like Jeevanjee and Adamji, the history of the Asian presence in East Africa figures labourers, discarded wives, unsuccessful traders and children of mixed racial parentage: people whose position in the racial hierarchy of colonial East Africa becomes ever more obscure. The paper concludes by tracing the way in which three writers use the novel form to tell the relationship between class complicity and racial hierarchy which defined the Asian East African position during the period of British colonial rule.

The footprints of history: path dependence in the transformation of property rights in Kenya's Maasailand

The recent wave of subdivision of Maasai group ranches is not an isolated event, but rather part of a broader, historical process of transformation in land relations and policy development in Maasailand. Maasai have over time supported land privatization, first by formalizing collective rights in group ranches and more recently by individualizing collective land holdings. Privatization is perceived to be an effective strategy for safeguarding Maasai land claims against appropriation by non-Maasai, the government and elite Maasai. Construction of the Uganda railway in early twentieth century and the subsequent influx of European settlers who were granted individual title to secure their investments are events that began the institutional path of privatization. The persistence and dominance of individualized arrangements regardless of other more optimal property rights options is a result of the dominance of elite interests (supported by state institutions) even as state imposed institutions replaced Maasai customary systems of land allocation.

Massacre at Ribo Post: Expansion and Expediency on the Colonial Frontier in East Africa

The colonial conquest of East Africa was a protracted and haphazard business spanning decades, first begun in the early 1890s but not completed until 1919. As the frontier of colonial conquest advanced, there were many episodes of Africa resistance but also many examples of capitulation and collaboration.1 The best survey of this complex period of colonial conquest in East Africa is surely to be found in John Lonsdale's two essays on the subject, the first dealing with the British East African Protectorate between 1895 and 1905, the second focusing more specifically upon events in Western Kenya between 1894 and 1908.2 At the level of the Protectorate, Lonsdale identifies three distinct in the conquest of territory. The first of these saw Britain dominate the coast through the influence of the sultan of Zanzibar, with penetration inland being carried out by the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC). In the second phase, from 1895 to 1901, with the declaration of protectorates over Uganda and East Africa (Kenya), British interests rallied to protect the road to Uganda and to construct a railway linking the Indian Ocean to Lake Victoria (Nyanza). In the third phase, commencing with the railway's completion in 1901, colonial control was finally extended over a broader front, with episodes of violence alongside economic incorporation and political accommodation. Narrowing his focus to Western Kenya and the conquest of the many Luyia, Luo, and Gusii polities in this region, Lonsdale offers a more detailed and subtle examination of the second of these phases. seen from Western Kenya between 1895 and 1901, the process of conquest was uneven and sporadic, violent at times but compliant to local politics at other moments. Lonsdale here discerns five sequential phases in this six-year period: (1) coexistence, from August 1894 to June 1895; (2) ascendancy, from July 1895 to March 1897, driven by enhanced military capacity; (3) coexistence again, from April 1897 to June 1898, a function of limited resources of conquest and the fragility of British authority; (4) domination, from July 1898 to April 1900, the restoration of a firmer colonial authority characterized by a willingness to deploy coercive force and to exploit local political allies; and (5) control, from May 1900 onwards, with the consolidation of colonial military power and the formalization of authority through the co-option of allies within the structures of the colonial regime. The sequence of conquest reveals that the triumph of the colonizer was seldom inevitable, frequently deflected by the limitations of colonial resources, and more often than not driven by the opportunities afforded by the dynamics of local politics. British success was usually dependent upon African allies and confederates. The extension of the colonial frontier in Western Kenya was therefore not a coordinated and orderly advance, but a spasmodic and opportunistic struggle for ascendancy in a political environment that was both obscure and unpredictable. Lonsdale's account of local conquest, like those of Godfrey Muriuki, Peter Rogers, and Richard Waller for other parts of the East African Protectorate, rightly gives prominence to the British concern to protect Sclater's road, and then the Uganda railway.3 Until 1901 there was little attempt to extend colonial authority beyond this limited horizon. One notable exception to this was in the Baringo region of the northern Rift Valley, where between 1899 and 1901 the British made a bold-perhaps even reckless-attempt, to extend colonial authority far to the north of the road and railway that connected Mombasa to the great lake. The advance into Baringo was prompted by the desire to control the rich ivory trade of the northern regions, in the hope that this would bring much-needed revenue to the coffers of the colonial administration.4 The difficulty of this task was seriously underestimated. Since the British were only dimly aware of the workings of the ivory trade, without any established base of support among local Kalenjin-speaking peoples who dominated the region, and completely dependent for supply and military support upon small pockets of Maa-speaking allies, this imperial venture proved to be premature. …

The Planning and Construction of the Uganda Railway

The Planning and Construction of the Uganda Railway

Government and Labour in Kenya 1895-1963

Introduction: Currency and Exchange Rates Part 1: The Early Years, 1895-1901: Slavery and its Abolition. Porters. The Construction of the Uganda Railway. Other Labour Part 2: The Establishment of the Labour System, 1902-1914: Master, Servant and Government. Sadler, Hollis and Churchill, 1903-8. Girouard and Belfield, 1908-12. The 1912-13 Native Labour Commission. Conclusion Part 3: The First World War, 1914-1918: Military Labour: Labour within the Protectorate Part 4: Crisis and Consequences, 1918-1930: Northey, Coryndon and Grigg. The Resident Labour System. Registration: The 'Kipande' System. Compulsory Labour. Currency, Coinage, Wage Reduction and Taxation. Conclusion Part 5: Depression and Unrest, 1930-1939: The White Farmers. The Business Community. The Civil Servants Part 6: Confrontation in Nairobi and Mombasa, 1937-1939: Makhan Singh, Conditions in Nairobi and the Labour Trade Union of East Africa. Conditions in Mombasa. The 1939 Mombasa General Strike Part 7: The Second World War, 1939-1945: War Service and Experience. Conscription for Agricultural Production Part 8: Workers Federation: Mombasa 1940-1950: Poverty and Unrest, 1940-6. The 1947 Mombasa General Strike Part 9: Brave New World, 1945-1952: Welfare Colonialism. Wages, Productivity and Trade Unions. The 1950 Nairobi General Strike Part 10: The Squatters' Revolt: Political Developments. Rural Developments Part 11: The Age of Tom Mboya: Government policy and the labour department, 1950-6. A New Leader. Industrial Relations in the Port of Mombasa, 1950-60. The Development of Policy, 1956-63. The Flowering of the Trade Unions. The Triumph of Mboya. Conclusion.

Wildlife Conservation in Uganda in Relation to Economic Development

railroad workers on the Uganda Railway, truculent and stupid great rhinos which charged everything within smelling distance, including railroad locomotives, or elephants which terrorized native villages by night. And when the British government gradually realized the high importance of game preserves and national parks, the Africans remained understandably unconvinced. Their crops and livestock were in contant jeopardy, and the antelopes and other vegetarians were a traditional source of food to many tribes. The advent of World War II did not help. Britain at war was in no position to spend large sums of money to protect leopards and hyenas in distant Africa, a d hunting safaris and tourists were simply not abroad during those years to provide direct revenues. That wildlife has eclined rapidly in recent years has been amply documented. Everyone, including myself, who was in East Africa a mere 30 years ago, can testify to the striking diminution of its large wildlife since then (Huxley, 1961).

A Classification of some Rhyolites, Trachytes, and Phonolites from part of Kenya Colony, with a Note on some Associated Basaltic Rocks

In spite of the importance of the volcanic region of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, very little attention has been paid in the past to the detailed petrography of the rocks of Kenya Colony. Previous work on the subject may be summarized in a few sentences. August Rosiwal described the rocks collected by L. von Hohnel on Count Teleki's expedition in 1886–88 (1891, pp. 490–511). Descriptions of some of the lavas of Mount Kenya were given by J. W. Gregory (1900) in his account of the geology of that mountain, which he ascended in 1893, and G. T. Prior (1903) described the rocks collected by Gregory in other parts of the Colony on the same expedition, and specimens from a collection presented to the British Museum (Natural History) by Sir H. H. Johnston in 1901. This paper contained five analyses. H. B. Maufe (1908) gave an account of the field relations of the rocks which he collected in 1905 and 1906 along the line of the Uganda Railway and on several traverses from various points along it. He followed Prior's nomenclature fairly closely. A few specimens collected by G. Uhlig, also on the line of the Uganda Railway, were described by M. Goldschlag (1912), who gave four analyses. Miss A. T. Neilson (1921) gave a brief description of the rocks collected by J. W. Gregory in 1919. Finally, A. Lacroix (1923) gave a short summary of the work of these earlier authors and added four new analyses of

New books

EUROPE. Hawick and the Border. By the late E. S. Craig, Advocate. Edited by the Rev. James Wotherspoon. Hawick: W. and J. Kennedy, 1927. Price 25s. Wild Drumalbain, or The Road to Meggernie and Glen Coe. By Alasdair Alpin MacGregor. London : W. and K. Chambers Ltd., 1927. Price 7s. 6d. A Highland Parish: A History of Fortingall. By Alexander Stewart. With a Foreword by Professor W. J. Watson. Glasgow: Alex. MacLaren and Sons, 1928. Price 10s. 6d. Spain from the South. By J. B. Trench. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1928. Price 10s. 6d. Marching Spain. By Mr. V. S. Pritchett. London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1928. Price 10s. 6d. Pass‐Staaten in den Alpen. Albrecht Haushofer. Berlin‐Grunewald: Kurt Vowinckel, 1928. Preis M 10. Italy from End to End. By H. Warner Allen. London : Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1927. Price 10s. 6d. ASIA. Humanity and Labour in China. By Adelaide Mary Anderson, D.B.E., M.A. London: Student Christian Movement, 1927. Price 10s. 6d. net. Sketches of Vanishing China. By Arthur H. Heath. London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1927. Price 30s. net. The British Connection with India. By K. T. Paul. Student Christian Movement, 1927. Price 5s. The Ordinary Man's India. By A. Claude Brown, M.B.E. London: Cecil Palmer, 1927. Price 10s. 6d. A Tour in Southern Asia. By Horace Bleackley. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head Ltd., 1928. Price 12s. 6d. Magic Ladakh: An Intimate Picture of a Land of Topsy‐Turvy Customs and Great Natural Beauty. By “Ganpat” (Major M. L. A. Gompertz, 10th Baluch Regiment, Indian Army), author of The Road to Lamaland, Harilek, The Voice of Dashin, etc. London : Seeley, Service and Co. Ltd., 1928. Price 21s. net. AFRICA. Kenya from Within: A Short Political History. By W. M'Gregor Ross, B.A., M.Sc., B.E., M.Inst. C.E., sometime Assistant Engineer, Uganda Railway Construction, 1900; Director of Public Works, East Africa Protectorate (later Kenya Colony), 1905–1923; also Member of Legislative Council, 1916–1922. London : George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1927. Price 18s. net. The Black Journey. By Georges‐Marie Haardt and Louis Audouin‐Ddbreuil. London : Geoffrey Bles, 1928. Price 16s. Nigeria under British Rule. By Sir W. N. Geary, Bart. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1927. Price 16s. net. A History of South Africa. By Professor Eric A. Walker. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Price 12s. 6d. net. On the Trail of the Veiled Tuareg. By Dugald Campbell, F.R.A.I., author of In the Heart of Bantuland. London: Seeley, Service and Co., 1928. Price 21s. net. AMERICA. A Wayfarer in the West Indies. By Algernon Aspinall, C.M.G. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd., 1927. Price 7s. 6d. To the Foot of the Rainbow. By Clyde Kluckhohn. London: Eveleigh Nash and Grayson Ltd., 1928. Price 12s. 6d. Old Trails and Roads in Perm's Land. By John T. Faris. London: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1927. Price 25s. net. The South American Handbook, 1928. Edited by J. A. Hunter. London: South American Publications Ltd. Price 2s. 6d. net. AUSTRALIA. Adventures in the Big Bush. By Cyril Grant Lane. London: Hutchinson and Co., 1928. Price 18s. POLAR. Etah and Beyond; or, Life within Twelve Degrees of the Pole. By D. B. Macmillan. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1928. Price 21s. net. Antarctica: A Treatise ore the Southern Continent. By J. Gordon Hayes. London : The Richards Press, 1928. Price £2, 2s. net. GENERAL. Peoples and Problems of the Pacific. By J. Macmillan Brown. 2 vols. London: Ernest Brown, 1927. Price 50s. net. The Human Habitat. By Ellsworth Huntington. London: Chapman and Hall Ltd., 1928. Price 15s. The Voyage of the "Caroline” to Van Diemen's Land and Batavia in 1827–38. By Rosalie Hare. With additional chapters by Ida Lee. London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1927. Price 15s. Human Migration and the Future: A Study of the Causes, Effects, and Control of Emigration. By J. W. Gregory, F.R.S., D.Sc., Professor of Geology in the University of Glasgow. London : Seeley, Service and Co. Ltd., 1928. Price 12s. 6d. net. Grenzen: In ihrer Geographischen und Politischen Bedeutung. Dr. Karl Haushofer. Berlin‐Grunewald : Kurt Vowinckel, 1927. Preis M. 18. EDUCATIONAL. An Introduction to Oceanography: With Special Reference to Geography and Geophysics. By James Johnstone, D.Sc. Second Edition, completely revised. London: Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., 1928. Price 15s. net. Field Astronomy for Engineers and Surveyors. By David Clark, M.A., B.Sc. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1926. Price 10s. 6d. net. Handbook of Commercial Geography. By Geo. G. Chisholm, M.A., B.Sc., Hon. LL.D. (Edin.). Eleventh edition, revised and edited by L. Dudley Stamp, D.Sc., B.A. (Lond.). London: Longmans, Green and Co. Ltd., 1928. Price 25s. Maps, their History, Characteristics, and Uses. By Sir Herbert George Fordbam. Second Edition. Cambridge : University Press, 1927. Price 6s. net.

New Locomotives, Kenya and Uganda Railway

New Locomotives, Kenya and Uganda Railway

Further Jurassic Fossils from Kenya Colony

Mr. E. J. Wayland, of the Geological Survey of Uganda, has recently found three interesting fossils which throw further light on the age of the beds to the west and north of Mombasa. One of them is a cast of an ammonite in brown ironstone, which has been kindly examined by Dr. L. F. Spath; he says that being only a cast its specific identification is perhaps impossible. It is a Grossouvria, and he says it is very similar to several examples of G. lateralis (Waagen), from the Callovian anceps beds of Kachh. He identifies it as certainly a member of Siemiradzki's form-series of Perisphinctes balinensis, Neumayr. This identification is of interest as the fossil was obtained at the point 10/6 miles from Mombasa on the Uganda Railway. This position lies to the west of, and therefore at a lower horizon than, the ammonite-bearing shales near Mombasa. At 11 1/9 miles along the railway I found a lamellibranch in some dark shales and Dacqué (Geol. Rundsch., vol. i, 1910, p. 159) has recorded from near by some obscure Cephalopod and plant remains which he identified as Bathonian.

The Age of the Duruma Sandstone, East Africa

West of the marine Jurassic rocks near Mombasa the Uganda Railway traverses for 46 miles a belt of sandstones and shales which are grouped together as the Duruma Sandstone. The few fossils hitherto obtained from this series have not given any definite evidence as to its age, which is, however, shown by the relations of the sandstones to the Kambe Limestone to be pre-Bathonian. The Mazeras Sandstone, one of the upper members, contains many trunks of Dadoxylon, the age of which, according to Professor Seward, may be anything from Trias to Kainozoic. An Estheriella and some plants were found in the Maji ya Chumvi beds by Maufe and have been regarded as either Permian or Triassic. The lowest division, the Taru Grit, has not yet yielded any certain fossil, but it has been regarded as continuous with the shales in the Sabaki Valley, which yielded the Permian mollusc, Paleanodonta fischeri, and with the plant bearing Tanga beds in the north-eastern corner of Tanganyika Territory. A bore in quest of water was made near Samburu Station to the depth of 527 feet in the Taru Grits. The cores are preserved by the Uganda Railway at Nairobi, and Mr. David Harris recently re-examined them and made the useful discovery of two fragments of fossil plants. They have been kindly sent to me by Dr. A. W. Rogers and examined by Professor A. C. Seward. He identifies them as a Voltzia and an Ullmania. For the drawings, Fig. 1, I am indebted to Mr. L. D. Currie. Both fossils are specifically indeterminable, but Professor Seward states that they certainly belong to the flora collected by Dr. Teale in the Tanga beds, which was described in 1922. Professor Seward assigns that flora to an age between the Upper Permian and the Rhaetic, and seems inclined to regard it as probably Trias.

Twenty-Five Years in East Africa

In this volume, Mr. Roscoe has given an account of some of his experiences and observations of the manners and customs of the natives of East Africa during his twenty-five years' service as a missionary in that area. In particular his aim has been to describe the condition of the country and the natives when first he took up his work. From this point of view, his book forms a useful pendant to the more strictly ethnographical works he has already published dealing with the Baganda and other Bantu tribes. The connected narrative adds colour to these analytical studies. When Mr. Roscoe first arrived in the country the Uganda railway, of course, was not in existence, and he gives a vivid picture of the difficulties encountered by the traveller, arising both from the character of the country and the untrustworthiness of the native carrier, the only means of transport. To many of his readers the most interesting section of the book will be that dealing with the events, of which he was an eye-witness, leading to our assumption of the Protectorate over Uganda. In this account, curiously enough, Sir Frederick Lugard is mentioned only incidentally.

Railways: East Africa Protectorate

Railways: East Africa Protectorate Get access Railways: East Africa Protectorate. Administration Report, 1915–16. (Nairobi: Uganda Railway Press. 1916.) African Affairs, Volume XVI, Issue LXIII, April 1917, Pages 262–265, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a099836 Published: 01 April 1917