THE WAKAMBA 



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ready cooked food, such as sweet potatoes, beans mixed with 

 colocasia leaves, yams, &c. Probably for the same reason 

 these Wakamba were much more free and easy than we should 

 have expected ; but the natives who are accustomed to deal 

 with trading caravans are always more or less independent. 



We were now in the north-western corner of Ukambani, in 

 the district of Iveti, also still sometimes called Macliako, after 

 the recently deceased chief of that name. 



A rugged, and once well-wooded, but now almost treeless, 

 highland, Iveti varies in height from about 5,000 to 7,000 feet 

 above the sea-level. Badly watered by a few little brooks only, 

 which disappear after a very short course, the soil is yet fruit- 

 ful, yielding plentiful crops of dhurra, maize, sugar-cane, colo- 

 casia, beans, bananas, sweet potatoes, yams, manioc, and gourds. 

 The natives also own still healthy herds of fine cattle, fat sheep 

 and goats, and plenty of poultry, but no donkeys. Quantities 

 of butter and mutton fat were daily offered for sale. The 

 Wakamba belong to the Bantu stock, and are a well-grown 

 handsome race. The men are circumcised in the Mahomedan 

 manner, and both sexes have the upper incisors sharpened to 

 a point, the result of which is that their other teeth often decay 

 or fall out. Their villages are small, and are all either on the 

 mountain slopes or in ravines near the base — never in the 

 open valleys. 



These Wakamba are a very lively, noisy set of people, as 

 we very soon had occasion to find out. First they made a fuss 

 about the site we had chosen for our camp, which they said was 

 too near their plantations, and then the hongo difficulty came 

 up, the matter having, for want of a chief, to be settled with 

 some sixty or seventy old men, who, in a very determined 

 manner, demanded ivory and nothing but ivory. The fact is, 

 these Wakamba often made trips to the coast themselves, going 

 chiefly to Mombasa, to sell the ivory which they either get by 



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