A CROWDED COLONY
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.] SIR,—My father gave me Mr. Max Salvadori's article in last Friday's Spectator to read. I was born and bred in East Africa, and spent my early years and first went to school there, so I suppose I must be classed as one of the "mentally dull " children he refers to.
Mr. Salvadori doesn't seem to have much good to say for Kenya. It doesn't seem to hold enough people, for he says there are only 300,000 square miles in East Africa fit for white habitation. However, what it lacks in size it seems to make up for in density, for Mr. Salvadori starts his article by saying they get 18.7 persons on the square inch. (I suppose that's due to their poor physique.) So at this rate the country can take a population of exactly 225,212,866,560,000,000 ; but then I'm so mentally dull that I daresay I've got the figure wrong, though it doesn't much matter because my father says your paper is far too high-brow to publish a silly letter from a schoolboy.
Looking forward to my return to Kenya.—I am, yours truly,
[It was not Mr. Salvadori. He wrote " sq. m. " and so it was in the first instance printed ; how " m. " became in the ultimate event "in." is a question into which purposeful research is at present being pursued.—Eo. The Spectator.]
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