180 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



charms from the prying multitude. I had seen 

 her three years before, from the top of the 

 Kikuyu Escarpment, when, one gloriously clear 

 day, her smile had burst forth to the north, and 

 the towering top of giant Kilimanjaro had pierced 

 the heavens to the south-east, but I longed to 

 see the northern peak close at hand. Day 

 after day she disappointed me, till one morning 

 at Embu, when the sky was clear and blue, she 

 flung her majesty into the dome of azure, serene 

 and chaste and exquisitely fair in her garment 

 of snow, but with a suggestion of cruelty and 

 defiance in the ragged edges of her summits. 



But if Kenia is beautiful, the people who live 

 by her grace in this part of Africa are wild, ill- 

 featured savages. As yet they are scarcely 

 subjected to British rule. Indeed only a few 

 months ago they fired poisoned arrows at a 

 District Commissioner who had gone his ad- 

 ministrative way among them. The accom- 

 panying photograph of Mutua, chief of one of 

 the most unruly factions, I took at a village 

 where trouble at one time seemed imminent 

 over a paltry question of firewood. But after 

 a display of firmness the old villain exercised 

 all his powers to secure peace, and eventually 

 he got a few cents for his trouble instead of 

 the bullet which perhaps otherwise would have 

 been his reward. 



By the Suka Kikuyu, Kenia is called Kilimara, 

 a word which, very liberally translated, means 

 " deceptive mountain." The old chief, Mutua, of 

 the khaki helmet and cheap rug, explained that 

 the great hill was so named because it seemed 

 to lie close at hand, yet when you set out to 

 reach its rugged masses it appeared to retreat 

 farther and farther into its cloudland fastnesses. 



