I determine to extend my operations into more remote districts of the Kikuyu country—New friends—Native taste for tea—Plague of ants—Curious superstition with regard to milking cows—The Kalyera reject my friendly overtures—Trouble at headquarters—Tragic interview with a recalcitrant chief—Gain further prestige thereby—Further plans—Take my Kikuyu followers down to Mombasa—Their impressions in contact with civilization On returning to my home among the Kikuyu I found that the country was fairly quiet, so I thought I would take the opportunity to explore a little farther into the interior, and, if possible, make friends among some of the other chiefs, thus enlarging the area from which I could draw supplies of food. My idea was to build trading stations at various points in the country, and, leaving a few men in charge at headquarters, to organize a fairly large expedition to explore other parts of the country and induce the natives to make friends and trade with me. The first people I wished to come to terms with were the Kalyera, who had given me so much trouble on the road to Naivasha. I wished Having prepared my expedition, we set off. All the country through which we passed was under cultivation, by which I mean that wherever a clearing had been made in the forest the land was either growing food or had been abandoned in fallow after being under cultivation for some time; the custom of the Kikuyu being to cultivate the land until it showed signs of becoming exhausted and then make a fresh clearing and repeat the process. The first day passed without any trouble at all from the natives, who were all more or less friendly towards me in this part, and our first camp was pitched in the territory of a typical native chief, a rather stout and quite jolly sort of fellow, who owned a large number of cattle, sheep, and goats, and who seemed a good deal more like a Masai than a Kikuyu. I had not seen him before, but he had sent some of his people to help me against the hostile tribes who had come down to attack us. He wanted me As time went on, and my power and influence They had never seen a white man before, and likened me to their god Ngai, as I was a great medicine man, and they believed that I could make rain. They also thought that I was unkillable, but, knowing their treacherous nature, I never allowed myself to be caught off my guard. The Kikuyu will come up to you smiling and kill you the next moment if he gets the chance. This happened in the case of a man who went out to buy food only about twenty miles from Fort Smith. The chief came up to him smiling, and while he shook hands with one hand drew his sword with the other, and the man barely escaped with his life, while all the men with him were killed. As before stated, they wear their swords on the right side, as the action of drawing the sword is less noticeable from that side, and their opponent has less warning of their intention. This chief, Wunjaggi, had been notified of my coming by a messenger sent on ahead of the party, and sent out some of his warriors to welcome me, who plucked handfuls of grass and waved them as a sign of peace. The chief met me with a huge spear in his hand, which, as soon as he saw me, he stuck in the ground, and The chief gave me a present of sheep for myself and my men, and when we had selected a site and pitched our tent some njohi 10. A native drink. I invited the chief to drink tea with me, out of a cup and saucer, and at first he took a lot of persuading, but after tasting the tea he liked it so much that I had reason to regret having introduced the practice, as both he and the various other chiefs I met got so fond of it that they would demand it whenever they saw me. They were also very fond of salt, which they would eat by the handful. This fondness for salt may seem to those who are accustomed to use it without stint, and even waste large quantities carelessly, rather peculiar; but it must be borne in mind that in many parts of the world besides the Kikuyu country salt is a very rare article and a heavily-taxed luxury, every grain of which must be carefully economised. The Kikuyu obtained the requisite salt for their animals from certain salt-pans, or, as they are called in some parts of the world, salt-licks, which were places where the earth was sufficiently mixed with saline particles to give it a fairly strong, brackish taste. This earth is dug up by the natives and mixed with water till it is of the consistency of liquid mud; it is then placed As the country here was about seven thousand feet above sea-level it became very cold at night, and I had always a big fire lighted at sundown, and before turning in saw that a good guard was set. During our first night among my new friends we had a most unpleasant experience, in the shape of a visitation from an army of brown ants, which came right through the camp. These brutes—they are about half an inch long, and so may be rightly called brutes—have very powerful jaws, like the claws of a lobster, and bite most fearfully. They covered everything in their path, and, getting into the blankets, drove me out of my tent, and caused every one to dance about in the most comical fashion in their efforts to get rid of the pests. So tenacious were they that one could hardly pull them off, and the whole camp was in an uproar during the hours that the army took to pass, and there was little more We had started about 6 p.m., and about five hours’ march brought us to the village of the next chief, named Caranja, whose looks I did not like from the first, as he had a most truculent and treacherous appearance, so that, although he shook hands with me readily when we met, I did not trust him, and ordered my men to keep a particularly strict guard, and forbade them to go into any of the villages. We camped outside, and nothing of note happened, except that the chief was most interested in my gun, and asked me to fire a few shots at a tree to show him how it worked—a request with which I complied. Starting at daybreak the next morning, the chief himself accompanied me as guide for some distance, and when beyond his jurisdiction I was surprised to find that the people had all deserted the villages along our road. I imagine that what had happened was that the chief had sent All the country round was thickly populated and under cultivation, like the districts we had already passed through. The chief who had been guiding us had returned to his own village, and we were making very slow progress through an unknown country when two natives came in sight, whom we found had been sent by another chief to guide us to his place. They said it was not very far away, but the native has very little idea of distance, and I thought we were never going to arrive at his village. I knew from experience that a native will lead you on for two or three days with the assurance that you are close to your destination. Our guides kept telling us that it was just over the next hill, and when we had got over that it was always just over the next. I was beginning to get tired, and thought about camping for the night, when the guides pointed out a village in the distance, which The chief’s name was Jugana-wa-Makura, and he had with him a friend, a neighbouring chief, named Bartier, and we were soon very friendly together. Makura brought his old mother to see me—a Masai woman, who wore a dress of skins, plentifully hung with iron-wire ornaments. The old lady was very friendly, shaking hands with me, and telling me that she had heard a Both of these loyal chiefs, unfortunately, paid for their friendship to the white man with their lives. Some two years after this I came into the country with an expedition sent by the Government to punish the Kalyera for some outrages, and called on Jugana-wa-Makura and Bartier for the assistance of some of their warriors, which was readily given. After our expedition left the country the Kalyera ambushed both these chiefs and murdered them for having assisted the Government expedition. As is usually the custom in such cases, the criminals escaped scot-free, no steps ever being taken by the Government to find out and punish the murderers. I had had great difficulty in obtaining milk from the previous Kikuyu we had met, as, being very superstitious, they thought that if I drank the milk the cow from which it came would die. I found that this superstitious objection to giving away the milk of their cows prevailed throughout the Kikuyu country. The people themselves use very little, if any, milk for food Owing to milking not being a general practice, the cows would never give their milk unless the calf was near by, so that if the calf died it was their practice to stuff the skin and place it by the cow when they went to get any milk. This chief, however, brought me plenty of milk, and was altogether most friendly disposed, so we camped there for several days, the natives coming in every day to see me, and organizing a big dance for my special benefit. They had heard of my people being killed while going into Naivasha, and told me that the Kalyera were a bad lot and not long before had murdered some Government soldiers who had been sent out to buy food for the people constructing the Uganda Railway. Being now close to the Kalyera country, I tried to get into touch with some of the chiefs, but they would not come to see me, only sending a lot of insulting messages in reply to my requests for interviews, and saying that if they saw any The two friendly chiefs brought me in a lot of food, for which I traded with them, and also several tusks of ivory, which I also acquired. Unfortunately, my own people could not carry all that I had bought down to headquarters, and the chief’s people refused to go down with me, saying that they would be killed on the way back, the other tribes being hostile to them; so that the food had to be stored until such time as I could arrange to have it transferred to Karuri’s. My followers having made friends with the people with whom we had been staying, we were all very sorry to leave; but it was imperative that we should return at once, as a rumour had reached me that my people at headquarters were in trouble, and they had sent a message for me to come back as quickly as possible. We had hardly got started on the return journey when it was rumoured among the natives that I had gone on this expedition especially to see the Kalyera people, and that I was returning because I was afraid to meet them. Emboldened by this, the tribe living to the north had attacked my headquarters, killed a lot of the people, and raided the country, burning the villages, and carrying off a lot of cattle, sheep, and goats, It seemed that my own people had been partly the aggressors, and the old quarrelling had been started again; so I sent out messengers to ask the other chiefs in the neighbourhood to come in to see me. It is the custom always to send two messengers together, as no native will travel alone, and I waited some time, but as neither of the men returned, I supposed that they had both been murdered. So I moved out and pitched my camp at one of my trading stations on the boundary of the country, where I had built a house, which I found had not been interfered with. I hoped, by staying there a few days, to get into communication with the natives, with the object of getting the old men of the district to come in for a shauri. In this I was successful, and we talked over the whole matter of the raid. They said that they had no wish to fight, but the young warriors had got out of hand, carrying things their own way. The result of the palaver was that the women and However, this peaceful settlement did not please them, and, coupled with my failure with the Kalyera, caused a change of feeling towards me; the people became insolent, and I had to be more than ever on my guard. Things were getting pretty bad, and it so happened that, just at this time, I had to call in a rather powerful headman, who had been causing a good deal of disturbance in the country, to see me; so I sent a messenger to his village to summon him to my camp. He refused to come, and sent back an insolent message, which was heard by all the people round about, and caused a jeering laugh at my expense. This headman was known as a great warrior, who was said to have slept out in the bush at night to kill lions with a spear, and was supposed to have killed several in that way. I sent further messages to him, but he absolutely refused to come, and began to send threatening replies. He had a following of about one hundred fighting men, and it became a standing joke in the country that he had defied the white man, so that I felt that unless I did something I should lose my I started off with only about ten men, and when we got within a few hundred yards of the mutineer’s village, I told the men to stay behind, while I went on to talk to the headman. They had evidently got news of my coming, and were waiting for me, as I could see about fifty men, all fully armed, with the chief in front, drawn up to receive me, and I had no doubt that others were in ambush near by. The man was a fine big fellow, every inch a chief, and I knew that I could only hope to succeed by showing a bold front, bravery being about the only virtue a savage recognizes. As I advanced alone they appeared to be impressed, and a grunt of approbation passed round. The crisis had arrived, and Having made the warriors put all their weapons in a heap, I ordered them to bring in some sheep and goats which they had stolen, and had the chief carried to my camp, while the sheep and goats were driven into my village, the whole of the warriors marching ahead of me till I reached my own people. After giving them a good feed, I gave them a good talking to, and dressed the wound on the chief’s head, binding it up with some sticking-plaster; while, to show that there was no ill-feeling, I invited his followers to spend the night in my camp, and return to their own village in the morning. During the night I heard an awful row, and, rushing out to see what had happened, I found Having re-established my influence, I was able to continue my trading, and collected large quantities of food, which I took down from time to time to Naivasha. The possession of cloth and other trade goods seemed gradually to have a civilizing effect on the natives, and they would listen attentively while I told them of our Queen and Government, the big cities of the white people, and the ships which crossed the seas. They were more ready to trade than formerly, and I found no difficulty in obtaining food, which they were only too ready to bring in, in order to procure the cloth and other trade goods with which I purchased it from them. My chief enemies were the rain-makers and Things being once more in a fairly settled state, I thought I should like to make a trip north, towards Mount Kenia, to try to make friends with some of the chiefs living in those parts. Wagombi, the powerful chief who lived at the foot of Mount Kenia, had a most murderous reputation, and was reported to be very treacherous. Several Arab and Swahili expeditions were reported to have been completely wiped out by him, while the King of Tato, another neighbouring chieftain, a man named Karkerrie, had rendered his name redoubtable by similar murders. I gathered, however, that there was a lot of ivory in that part of the country, and being also anxious to open more food stations, I was not to be scared by the ugly rumours I had heard. Another reason why I wished to make this journey was that I was anxious to see the place where Gibbons’s safari had been cut up. So I gathered all the information Of course my people heard what the witch doctor had to say, and in the face of his predictions did not want to go with me. I pointed out that so far nothing had happened to me during the time I had been in the country, nor had any harm befallen any of my personal servants; but my arguments were of no use, they declined to be persuaded, and begged me to I was able to buy all the trade goods I required, and having finished that part of my business, I paid a visit to the Sub-Commissioner to ask him to allow me to have some rifles for self-protection. He absolutely refused, repeating what he had said when I first came to East Africa, that white men were not wanted in the country. I pointed out to him that the Arab and Swahili traders possessed rifles, to which he replied that they had not obtained them with official sanction! Such was the class of administrator approved by Downing Street for the opening up of a new country! Before leaving Mombasa, where I stayed only a short time, I took the Kikuyu on board a ship, which was a remarkable experience for these people, who had spent all their lives in the mountains and had never even seen the sea, let alone a ship, before. If there was one thing that puzzled my Kikuyu followers more than another in Mombasa, it was, perhaps, the fact that everything had to be paid for. In their own country, when any Swahili traders came to a village they were accustomed to give them a sheep for food, and never thought of asking payment, but here, among the Swahili themselves, they found that they could get nothing unless they were prepared to pay for it; above all, they were astonished |