364 FUTURE PROSPECTS OF BRITISH EAST AFRICA partiii 



found the Galla driving their flocks and herds across the river 

 to escape the marauders, and saw the smoke of the burning 

 villages whence the natives had fled. At the Kiboko river I 

 found the dead bodies of some Wa-kamba who must have been 

 surprised and murdered in their sleep, as their arrows were still 

 in their sheaths, and their simes in their scabbards. Two 

 days' journey north of this place the road was littered with the 

 debris of broken boxes captured from a caravan taking stores 

 to Sir Gerald Portal's party in Uganda. Again, on the 

 Kapte plains near Bondoni, during our second march south 

 from Machakos, we encountered a small party of El-Moran, 

 who were on their way to attack some Ki-kamba villages. 

 On the plains of the Thika-thika we met some Kikuyu refugees 

 from Igeti ; their country had been ravaged by the Masai 

 army which we had seen enkraaled on the shores of Lake 

 Naivasha, and the district, for two days' march in length by 

 one in breadth, had been cleared as if by a hurricane. The 

 fugitives described the sudden attack, the massacre, the de- 

 vastation of the plantations, the capture of the cattle, and the 

 burning of the villages. And yet, as we listened to this 

 sickening story, we realised that this was merely one incident 

 in a continuous series of such horrors. 



At Nzaoi, in April, on our way inland, we had seen large 

 herds of cattle, while on our return at the end of July the 

 valley had been devastated and the herds captured. But on 

 this occasion the brave old warrior Kiketi, chief of the district 

 of Maka, told us how, having heard of the raid, he had sum- 

 moned his fighting men, had attacked and routed the Masai 

 on the return march, and recaptured the cattle. But victories 

 such as this are rare, and even old Kiketi dare not cultivate 

 the fertile lava plain that stretches westward from the foot of 

 the hills in which he lives. It is only from the less fertile soil 

 of the mountain fastnesses that his people can hope to reap the 

 crops that they have sown. Throughout British East Africa, 

 to the east of the Masai wedge, one can talk to none of the 

 peaceful agricultural tribes without hearing sad stories of 

 Masai raids. The people tell you of the impossibility of 

 cultivating exposed districts — generally the most fertile ones 

 — and they complain bitterly of the uselessness of keeping 

 cattle, which serve only as an incentive to Masai attack. 



