84 NEIV AFRICA. 



MURDER OF THOMAS LONDON. 



Although generally peaceable, the Waiiyika sometimes allow their avarice 

 to overcome their scruples and caution ; and perhaps this should not be charged 

 up to them as a conclusive evidence of their savagery. Perhaps their latest 

 crime against the human life of a white was the murder of Thomas London, 

 a British hunter in the region not far from the coast. Being hungry and 

 thirsty, he approached a village and paid a native boy a silver dollar for a 

 cocoanut. Such a large sum for so small a favor aroused the cupidity of an 

 old chief, Makelinga, and when Mr. London had laid aside his gun and was 

 bending over to wash his hands, the native leader, with three confederates, 

 sprung upon him and stabbed him to death. Only five dollars were found 

 upon the dead; but the murderers were tried and convicted at Mombasa and 

 hung on the scene of their crime, /\ugust 28, 1908. 



THE WAKAMBA, OF THE ATHI BASIN. 



The Wakamba have the distinction of being not only the largest tribe of 

 East Africa, but the only one which has never acknowledged permanent defeat 

 at the Hands of the Masai. They are both farmers and herdsmen. Like most 

 African tribes they are very superstitious, having their hoodoos against witch- 

 ery and their official witch doctors, who are sometimes more powerful than 

 the chiefs. After harvest the doctor always makes his rounds of the villages, 

 receives gifts and endeavors to "smell out" the witch in each community who 

 has been responsible for the sudden deaths and other misfortunes of the year. 

 When she (for it is generally a woman) has been located the villagers gradu- 

 ally desert her, leaving behind only one grim warrior, who, at the first favor- 

 able opportunity, pins her to the ground with his spear and leaves her to a 

 death of keen agony or slow torture. In case her death struggles are too 

 prolonged, the villagers return and stone her to death. A village near Mach- 

 akos station seems to have been a favorite location for enforcing "Kinyolla," 

 as this hideous custom is known, some forty women having met their fate 

 there within a year. 



THE MASAI, WITH CLAWS CUT. 



The once warlike Masai, not unlike the Sioux of the United States in their 

 heyday, are now virtually pacified and kept within the bounds of their reserva- 

 tion on the Laikipia plateau, northwest of Mount Kenia and northeast of 



