36 ON AN EAST AFRICAN RANCH [ch. it 



Many of the natives work for the settlers, as cattle- 

 keepers, as ostrich-keepers, or, after a fashion, as 

 laboin-ers. The settlers evidently niucli prefer to rely 

 upon the natives for unskilled labour rather than see 

 coolies from Hindostan brought into the country. At 

 Sir Alfred Pease's ranch, as at most of the other farms 

 of the neighbourhood, we found little Wakamba settle- 

 ments. Untold ages separated employers and employed ; 

 yet those that I saw seemed to get on well together. 

 The Wakamba are as yet not sufficiently advanced to 

 warrant their sharing in the smallest degree in the com- 

 mon government ; the "just consent of the governed" 

 in their case, if taken literally, would mean idleness, 

 famine, and endless internecine warfare. They cannot 

 govern themselves from witliin ; therefore they must be 

 governed from without ; and their need is met in 

 highest fashion by firm and just control, of the kind that 

 on the whole they are now getting. At Kitanga the 

 natives on the place sometimes worked about the house ; 

 and they took care of the stock. The elders looked 

 after the mild little humped cattle — bulls, steers, and 

 cows ; and the children, often the merest toddlers, took 

 naturally to guarding the parties of pretty little calves, 

 during the daytime, when they were separated from 

 their mothers. It was an ostrich-farm, too; and in the 

 morning and evening we would meet the great birds, as 

 they went to their grazing-grounds or returned to the 

 ostrich boma, mincing along with their usual air of 

 foolish stateliness, convoyed by two or three boys, each 

 with a red blanket, a throwing stick, copper wire round 

 his legs and arms, and perhaps a feather stuck in his 

 hair. 



There were a number of ranches in the neighbour- 

 hood — using "neighbourhood" in the large Western 



