x1 SWAHILI AND OTHER NATIVE TRIBES 129 
The next people met with on the road to the 
Great Lakes are the Wa Kamba, who inhabit the 
Ukambani province, and may be seen from M’toto 
Andei to the Athi River. They are a very large 
tribe, but have little cohesion, being split up into 
many clans under chiefs 
who govern in a patri- 
archal kind of way. In 
appearance and dress— 
or the want of it—they 
are very like the Wa 
Taita, and they have the 
same custom of filing 
the front teeth. As a 
rule, too, they are a 
peace-loving people, 
though when driven to 
it by hunger they will 
commit very cruel and 
treacherous acts of 
wholesale murder. 
MKAMBA WOMAN. 
While the railway was 
being constructed, a severe famine occurred in their 
part of the country, when hundreds of them died of 
starvation. During this period they several times 
swooped down on isolated railway maintenance gangs 
and utterly annihilated them, in order to obtain pos- 
session of the food which they knew would be stored 
IK 
