A PLEA FOR THE NATIVE 389 
shambas or the larger their goat or sheep herds, the greater 
became their danger. English occupation meant the 
immediate curbing of Massai aggressiveness; the Kikuyu 
won a breathing spell. What has been the result? Within 
fifteen years the tribe has changed. They are to-day rais- 
ing great quantities of grain, and their men and women 
are fast becoming the porters and field-workers of East 
Africa. Only four years ago a Kikuyu could not be per- 
suaded to take any work, however well paid, outside the 
narrow limits of his own country. He would throw down 
his burden and slip into the bush if he found the sefari’s 
route pointed away from his home. He might be convoyed 
or guarded to some point on the railroad where he had 
work given him, but the terror of the unknown would finally 
prove too much for him. Leaving his job, sacrificing his 
pay, the timid savage would slink away, perhaps to die by 
the roadside, as he staggered toward the distant slope of 
Kenia, his forest home. He is now another man; he is 
his own man, and the small cash of the country is finding 
its way into his pocket; he is richer than any other 
native, with the exception of the Massai. He is, of course, 
still deeply marked with the moral scars of his long 
misery; he is a liar and a thief, and parts quite readily 
with his women folk, but he is undoubtedly on “the march 
upward.”’ 
I stood, one muggy morning watching a band of Waganda 
carrying earth for the foundation of a new wing to the 
miserably dirty little hotel at Eutebbi (lately the official 
capital of Uganda). Each man had an empty kerosene can, 
a box of some kind or a basket, on his head into which he 
scooped the dirt he was removing with a small hoe. The 
earth had to be excavated from one place and dumped at 
another. The journey was forty yards; the men strolled 
along in line; if one of them wanted to converse with a pass- 
ing friend he did so leisurely and all the line waited till the 
