352 



TO KEN! A 



wooded, but the industrious natives have cleared away almost 

 every trace of forest from the interior, leaving only a belt as a 

 frontier buttress from one to two hours' march deep. 



A great many streams — we crossed sixty-two — flow through 

 Kikuyuland. Those from the south, which number forty-two, 

 join the Morio and form the Kaya or upper course of the Sabaki ; 

 the twenty from the north, which are of considerable volume, 

 join the numerous streams from Kenia to form the Sagana, 

 which, flowing southwards, joins the Tana on its way to its 

 outlet in the Indian Ocean at Lamu. 



In the fight grey volcanic soil of Kikuyuland grow nearly 

 all the cereals native to East Africa, and it is, in fact, the 

 granary of a very extended district. Several kinds of bananas 

 are grown as well as beans, sugar-cane, maize, potatoes, yams, 

 eleusine, dhurra, millet (Panicum italicum, L.), mawale (Penni- 

 setum spicatam), gourds, colocasia, and tobacco. Of course 

 all these are not equally distributed, millet, beans, and potatoes 

 being most plentiful in the south, whilst bananas abound in 

 the north and millet is entirely absent. 



The occurrence of millet in Kikuyuland is of peculiar 

 significance, as it has not so far been met with elsewhere in 

 Africa. Dr. Schweinfurth is of opinion that it was introduced 

 from India, which implies intercourse with that country in pre- 

 Mahomedan times. The Wakikuyu call millet mkombe, or, 

 when still in the husk, mkombe mo-lwnjore. 



Bananas are seldom allowed to become ripe, and we could 

 rarely get them. They are picked when still green and either 

 cooked for food or dried to make flour. Dhurra, eleusine, and 

 yams are also used for flour. Sugar-cane thrives admirably 

 here, but it does not grow to the great height it attains in 

 tropical lowlands. The natives chew it and also sometimes 

 make it into an intoxicating beverage, and in almost every 

 village we saw the long tree-trunks with some ten or twelve 



