The earliest account of Nairobi's history dates back to 1899 when a railway depot was built in a brackish African swamp occupied by a pastoralist people, the Maasai, the sedentary Akamba people, as well as the agriculturalist Kikuyu people who were all displaced by the colonialists. The railway complex and the building around it rapidly expanded and urbanized until it became the largest city of Kenya and the country's capital. The name Nairobi comes from the Maasai phrase , which translates to 'the place of cool waters'. However, Nairobi is popularly known as the "Green City in the Sun". Pre-independence The former swamp land occupied by the city now was once inhabited by a pastoralist people, the Maasai, the sedentary Akamba people, as well as the agriculturalist Kikuyu people, under the British East Africa protectorate when the British decided to build a railroad from Mombasa to Kisumu on the edge of Lake Victoria in order to open East Africa and make it accessible for trade and encourage colonial settlements. The Maasai were forcibly removed to allow white ranchers to use the land. The city continued to grow under British rule, and many British people settled within the city's suburbs. This continuous expansion of the city began to anger the Maasai people, as the city was devouring their land to the south. The Kikuyus were also angered and wanted the land returned to them. In 1894, work on the railway began. A British railroad camp and supply depot for the Uganda Railway was built in the Maasai area in 1899. The building soon became the railway's headquarters and a town grew up surrounding it, named after a watering hole known in Maasai as , meaning 'cool waters'. The location of the Nairobi railway camp was chosen due to its central position between Mombasa and Kampala, as well as its proximity to a network of rivers that could supply the camp with water. Its elevation made it cool enough for comfortable residential living. Furthermore, at 1661 meters above the sea level, the temperatures are too low for the mosquitoes carrying malaria to survive. The town was totally rebuilt in the early 1900s after an outbreak of plague and the subsequent burning down of the original town. By 1905, Nairobi was a humming commercial center and replaced Mombasa as capital of the British East Africa. The city expanded, supported by the growth in