A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE B77 
In their regard for truth there is the widest difference 
among the tribes of East Africa. The remoter, the wilder, 
the tribe, the more truthful you will find the tribesman. 
The Waganda by the lake, who are comparatively well 
known, and among whom missionaries, both English and 
French, have laboured with great success for many years, 
have attained to a degree of culture quite unexampled in 
East or Central Africa. These are sadly acknowledged to 
be, even by their missionary guides and teachers, both 
dishonest and untruthful. The Kikuyu are noted liars and 
thieves. “The Massai and the Nandi will deliberately lie to 
you, though I have noticed that if you know the man to 
whom you are appealing, and ask him directly to tell you 
the real truth or be silent, he will pluck a blade of grass 
and hold it for a moment between his fingers; if, after hav- 
ing done so, he repeats his previous statement, it will be the 
truth. I have in another place written at some length 
of what impressed me as the quite extraordinary regard 
for truth that you find among some of the smaller and 
unknown tribes. I cannot fancy any man more scrupu- 
lously accurate than the N’dorobo, a tribe popularly (and 
I feel sure mistakenly) supposed to be people of a low order 
of intelligence. The Elgao would proudly declare that no 
liar could remain in the tribe. They asserted as much of 
their neighbours, the Maraquette, with whom they were 
not always on the best of terms. No scientific man could 
possibly desire more careful, more accurate, more pains- 
taking witnesses to facts that come within their observation, 
than were these wild men, who had never conversed with 
any white man but myself and my guide, Mr. A. C. Hoey. 
Their power of observation was excellent, their statements 
of the incidents of a quite bloody battle in which they had 
engaged three years before was, as I happened to be able 
to prove, wonderfully free of all exaggeration. 
How then can we account for this remarkable difference 
