THE COUNTRY 355 
success of what would seem at least a step in the right 
direction. Now, though no magicians’ wand can be waved 
by any governor or government, that by its waving should 
suddenly transform age-long savage incapacity into the 
trained and educated ally of civilized progress, still the 
beginning of better things could be attempted here and now. 
Some of the natives are willing to work; that number 
is increasing. A premium should be placed on such will- 
ingness, a prize which the native could understand and 
value offered to all who try, and as yet no attempt to do 
this has been made. 
The system of taxation now in use in the Protector- 
ate, presses most unfairly on some, and others, those often 
best able to endureit, it never reaches at all. 
A friend of mine coming to meet me, in May last, 
saw three Kikuyu lying by the roadside, dead from actual 
starvation, while tied up in the corner of their poor, red, 
cotton blankets were the three rupees they were stagger- 
ing along to pay as hut tax (the only tax the native now 
pays) to the district collector. 
No native would touch the blankets or the rupees, 
the men lay in a shrunken little heap as they had died, 
with their blankets drawn over their faces. 
Now by contrast see the case of the Massai, that petted 
and most useless of all the East African natives. The 
Massai will do no work; when he is a boy he herds the 
cows and sheep; after his initiation he lives for ten years 
in the warrior’s kraal. Asa warrior he must obey his chief’s 
commands and be ready to defend his people against raids 
of wild men and beasts. Now, this military system of his 
once made him the dreaded master of all East Africa, 
but this time is past. There is now no further need for his 
militarism. He, as warrior, is nothing but a lazy licentious 
parasite, a burden on the country, if not a danger to it. 
Change he will not; why should he? He has the fattest | 
