CHAPTER VI 



ACROSS THE LANDS OF THE KIKUYU AND MASAI 



" Maneno madzo gausa ndzovu m'ndani " 

 (Fair speeches turn elephants out of the garden patch). 



Giriama Proverb (W. E. Taylor). 



I SHOULD have been glad to accept Mr. Ainsworth's prof- 

 fered hospitality for a few days' rest ; but I was now at the 

 entrance to the country I had especially come to explore, and 

 nothing could tempt me to linger on the threshold. Up to 

 this point the work had not been of special interest. The 

 geology was monotonous and dull, and the geography was 

 fairly well known. But a change in the geological structure 

 of the country was at hand. In the best existing sketch map 

 of the geology of East Africa, a large tract of country to the 

 west of Machakos is coloured as recent alluvium. I expected 

 this would prove to be an old lake basin or a desert of wind- 

 borne drift. From the hills crossed on the way to Machakos, 

 I had caught through the clouds occasional glimpses of a vast 

 level plain, and these had strengthened this expectation. Great 

 therefore was my surprise, on reaching the summit of the last 

 ridge of the Iveti Mountains, to see to the west an undulating 

 prairie instead of a level plain, and that this was composed not 

 of alluvium or sand, but of a hard, dark-coloured rock. Its 

 extent also was greater than I had expected. Here and there 

 in the foreground, bosses and ridges of gneiss, such as Lokenya 

 and Koma, rose above the surface ; a few dark lines of trees 

 marked the courses of the rivers. Except for these, we could 

 see only a vast expanse of rolling grass-land, extending west- 

 ward and southward as far as the eye could follow it. The 



