and their cattle kraals are
especially strongly built and carefully hidden. On one occasion I
managed after a great deal of difficulty and crawling on all-fours to
make my way into one of these kraals, and was much amazed to notice
what labour and ingenuity had been expended on its construction. Unlike
the Masai, the Wa Kikuyu have a fairly good idea of agriculture, and
grow crops of m'tama (a kind of native grain from which flour is made),
sugar-cane, sweet potatoes, and tobacco.

The Wa Kikuyu have the reputation of being a very cowardly and
treacherous people, and they have undoubtedly committed some very cruel
deeds. A friend of mine, Captain Haslem, with whom I lived for a few
months at Tsavo, was barbarously murdered by some members of this
tribe. He left me to go up to the Kikuyu country in charge of the
transport, and as he was keenly interested in finding out all about the
tropical diseases from which the animals suffered, he made it his
custom to dissect the bodies of those that died. The superstitious Wa
Kikuyu were fully convinced that by this he bewitched their cattle,
which at the time were dying in scores from rinderpest. So--instigated
no doubt by the all-powerful witch-doctor--they treacherously killed
him. For my part, however, I found them not nearly so black as they had
been painted to me. I had about four hundred of them working at one
thing or another at Nairobi and never had any trouble with them. On the
contrary I found them well-behaved and intelligent and most anxious to
learn.

As is the case with all other African races, the women of the Wa Kikuyu
do the manual labour of the village and carry the heavy loads for their
lords and masters, the bundles being held in position on their back by
a strap passing round the forehead.

Notwithstanding this some of them are quite pleasant looking, and once
they have overcome their fear of the European, do not object to being
photographed.

Of the other tribes to be met with in this part of the world, the
Kavirondo are the most interesting. They are an industrious, simple
people, devoted to agriculture and hospitable in the extreme--a little
addicted to thieving, perhaps, but then that is scarcely considered a
sin in the heart of Africa. They are clothed (to use Mark Twain's
expression) in little but a smile, a bead or two here and there being
considered ample raiment; nevertheless they are modest in their ways
and are on the whole about the best of