KAVIRONDO 67 



was plundered and burnt. There was very little for our 

 savage allies to loot — a few shields and spears, and some 

 Kavirondo drums, harps, and stools. 



The Kavirondo minstrel with his harp and stool may be met 

 with in almost every village. The stool is carved out of a solid 

 block of wood; it has four legs and a cup-shaped seat. It is 

 very strong, and can stand a deal of hard wear and tear. It 

 is whittled smooth with a knife, and then polished with the 

 rough leaves of a certain plant used instead of sand-paper. 



The Kavirondo harp consists of an oblong wooden bowl 

 covered with a piece of leather. Two pieces of wood, slightly 

 diverging from each other, are fixed inside the bowl ; a hori- 

 zontal piece fastens them to each other, and serves as a support 

 for the eight coils of string which converge and meet, w'here 

 they pass through a hole in the leather covering of the bowl. 

 The sound-aperture is placed somewhat to the right. The 

 minstrel holds the harp to his chest with one hand, and plays 

 with the other. The strings are not made of gut, but of some 

 vegetable fibre. 



In the pillaging which followed the capture of a village 

 some accidents happened on our side. One poor boy was 

 brought to me cut all over. The gashes were inflicted with a 

 spear. One of our savage allies had mistaken him for an 

 enemy and had tried to kill him. The boy had one of his 

 thumbs nearly cut ofl", a spear thrust through the leg, the cheek 

 laid open, gashes on the scalp, and cuts on the arm. He sur- 

 vived these dreadful injuries, but was horribly disfigured and 

 maimed for life. 



At the next village stormed, a desperate resistance was 

 offered by the enemy. I wore a conspicuous solar-helmet, and 

 from a loophole in the wall one of the enemy took me as a 

 target for pot-shots. A bullet at last whipped past unpleasantly 

 near my face. It missed ; and although a miss is as good as 

 a mile, 1 raised my rifle in self-defence and gave a return- 

 greeting. Whether I hit or missed I do not know, nor did I 

 care to investigate subsequently, but I was not molested anv 

 further from that quarter. Finding the rifles did not inflict any 

 material damage on an enemy crouching behind the protection 

 of the earth-wall, our leader tried the Hotchkiss gun ; but the 

 missiles simply passed clean through without shattering the 

 earthen rampart. He then brought the Maxim gun into posi- 



