CHAP. V AN EAST AFRICAN VETERAN 73 



the encouragement he could not give. He told me, to my dis- 

 appointment, that though he should not himself refuse to under- 

 take such a journey with such a force as mine, he should regard 

 it as a risky experiment, and that it was far more dangerous for 

 a raw recruit, ignorant alike of the languages, the country, and 

 the people. He said that in the present condition of the Kikuyu 

 country, I should certainly have to fight my way through it. 

 However, I consoled myself by the thought that Mr. Wilson's 

 last recollections of the Kikuyu were most unpleasant. He had 

 been in command of the station at Dagoreti in the Kikuyu 

 country during a very stormy period. He had been besieged by 

 the natives, and his communications cut off. He held the 

 fort till his ammunition was exhausted, for the supplies sent 

 him from the coast failed to reach him. His position was 

 then absolutely untenable ; so he sallied forth, and cut his 

 way through his besiegers to the fort at Machakos. Having 

 there obtained the ammunition that had been sent for him, 

 he returned to Dagoreti, recaptured the position, and rebuilt 

 the station, which had been burnt by the natives. Later on, 

 however, he was persuaded to retire by the leaders of a 

 caravan returning from Uganda. 



But I obtained a great deal of most useful advice, and we 

 sat up chatting in his cosy, artistically-upholstered tent till the 

 early hours of the morning. Then I tore myself away from 

 this mine of information, and went back to write out notes and 

 press plants until, at dawn, we left our camp and marched again 

 into the " barra." 



Two further marches brought us to the station of Tzavo, 

 a fort erected in 1890 by the British East Africa Company in 

 order to stop Masai raids down the valley of the Sabaki. For 

 this purpose its garrison of twelve Beluchi " Kiroboto " under a 

 Goanese clerk was quite inadequate, even if the men had been 

 trustworthy. These " Kiroboto " were part of a force of Asiatic 

 mercenaries raised by the Sultan of Zanzibar. Their name was 

 derived from that of the soldiers of the Sultan of Hyderabad, 

 from whose army the nucleus of the force was obtained. Of 

 the reliance that can be placed upon these men I had an illustra- 

 tion on the return journey, when the commander of the fort had 

 gone away for a few days. Before his departure he had locked 

 up all the ammunition, as the men were not to be trusted with 



