i88 The game of British east Africa. 



or worth noting. The more he learns about the objects around him the less boring is 

 the actual walking part of the trek. 



Some of the greatest interests in travelling are the choosing of routes and the 

 calculating of your positions and the working out of the way to some place you 

 wish to reach. Local guides have generally to be resorted to for showing the actual 

 paths in a neighbourhood, but for finding the way to any distant place they are 

 generally rather useless, and the more you can do without them the greater 

 independence you gain. The best way is to decide for yourself what hill or landmark 

 you should pass by, and you should then get a local native to show you a path leading 

 to it. Directly he gets a few hours from his village you will generally find that he 

 knows nothing about the country, and so he can be sent back and another obtained 

 farther on. 



The worst place I have travelled in yet for local guides is a section of the Lado 

 enclave. In one part of this the natives know nothing of the district, either by 

 hearsay or otherwise, beyond an hour or two hours' journey from their own village. 

 At every village I came to I was told a similar tale, " At the other side of the valley 

 there was a village, and the people in it were very bad and killed anyone who went 

 there, and beyond that village there were no more villages, it was just bush." I could 

 procure guides to show me half-way to the next village, representing a journey of 

 perhaps one and a half hours, and they would then hurry back in case they should 

 meet with the bad people. At the next village I was surprised to hear that " the 

 people whom I had just left were a very fierce and warlike people whom it was not 

 safe to go near, and that on the opposite side of the next valley lived an equally 

 ferocious and warlike tribe, and beyond them it was all bush." 



From all accounts the same state of things used to prevail in the Kikuyu country, 

 and each little slope between the hundreds of little streams running down from the 

 Aberdares used to possess a village or group of villages hostile to their neighbours on 

 the slopes on either side of them. Even now most Kikuyu have a strong objection 

 to moving from their own little section of country, and a still stronger dislike to 

 moving into country inhabited by any other tribe. Each little community is in great 

 dread of its neighbours, and never discovers that they are held equally in dread 

 themselves, and so bloodshed is most uncommon. 



This state of things was general with the timorous agricultural tribes which 

 now occupy such a large area of Africa, though there were, and are, other and 

 more warlike tribes, generally speaking pastoral tribes. When these latter felt a 

 desire for outward expansion or the working off superfluous energy, they must have 

 found the more cowardly and split-up tribes completely at their mercy to kill 



