Chapter 1: The White Immigrants -- June 21, 2020

Lord and Lady Cranworth, 1912, quotes.

One of the earliest settlers. Note the date. In 1941, James Fox had said that the story spanned three decades which would take us back to at least 1911.

Englishmen and Scotsmen.

Chapter 1: great background

History of British colonization of Kenya.

1895.

The great railroad from the coast to the interior. Brits vs Germans.

The Germans from the port city of Tanga.

The Brits from the port city of Mombasa, to Lake Victoria; 180 miles; 5.5 years to build; completed in 1901.

Arab slaving expedition .... p 10.

The labor to build the railway: Indian.

Masai 'Moran' (young warriors). The Masai seemed to respect the railway and the superiority of British weapons.

The lions of Tsavo, held up work for several weeks and seemed for a time to be invincible.

Taru desert, p. 11.

Kongoni, p. 11.

Nairobi: established in 1899.

Nairobi: at the frontier between the Masai and Kikuyu, the last possible rail depot berfore the track climbed 2,000 feet up the Kikuyu escarpment, the eastern wall of the Great Rift Valley. "For anyone looking down into the vast floor of the vlley for the first time, the sheer scale of htelandscape was overpowering -- something quite new to the senses.

Naivasha station: the beginning of the highlands; tea taken before the ride resumes

From there, up to Gilgil and then to Nakuru ...

... after some miles of torn adn red rock, ou emerged into thousands of acres of rolling English parkland ...

.... some of it resembled the west of Scotland ...

wild fig: sacred to the Kikuyu, p. 11

The railroad depleted the Colony's funds. The Commissioner of East Africa, Sir Charles Eliot, hatched a plan to bring products from the interior to the coast to pay for the railroad.

The first wave was very rough, but the second wave: Edwardian aristocracy and the British officer class. However, the first wave did have some peers -- victims of primogeniture, such as Berkeley and Galbraith Cole, younger sons of the Earl of Enniskillen.

Of note: the settlers' unchallenged leader from the turn of the century until his death in 1931, Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere...had first set eyes on Kenyz in 1892 ... the story of Lord Delamere... begins on page 12;

Land:

Delamere was granted the first plot

• along the railway line north-west of Kakuru
• at Njoro he began the experiment --- 

distribution of land, chaotic; handled by the Land Office in Nairobi

• 1904: the Norfolk otel was built
• trophy hunters, the "House of Lords,"

British reserve, but Kikuyu land along the British famrs were added to the serserve -- a costly political mistake.

The Rift Valley, where the Masai ran their cattle, was considered unoccupied

English: very, very paranoid about the hot, equatorial sun, p. 14; much on this;

Farming, p. 15

Equator Ranch, Delamere:
by 1906, 160,000 acres
all of it enclosed by 1,000 miles or so of barbed wire fencing
but by 1909 he was broke
forced to sell his estates in Cheshire; borrowed against what remained of the family trust;

1907: Delamere an eccentric-looking figure

Masai and Delamere, p. 16.

Masai cattle, p. 16

Drinking, p. 26:
started soon after midday with pink gins before lunch
gin fizzes in the shade at teatime
cocktails (Bronxes, White Ladies, Trinities) for sundowners
whisky and champagne until the lights went out
1928, p. 27
the year before the crash which drastically thinned out the settler population
the year Josslyn Hay's father died; Josslyn becomes the Earl of Erroll and High Constable of Scotland
he had already lived in Kenya for four years; in the heart of Happy Valley