308 



TO KENIA 



we slept soundly till the early morning. There was a pretty 

 heavy fall of rain in the night, which shows that we were very 

 anxious to keep our promises. 



The next morning we crossed several little Lrooks and some 

 rather steep ridges. The path led up hill and down dale, and 

 as the rain had made it slippery we had some bother with our 

 pack-animals. Once, indeed, we had to unlade them, and on 

 this account we were more than an hour getting through one 

 little valley. We had to creep along, coming to a standstill 

 every now and then, but not a man was allowed to remove or 

 even ease his load for a moment, as only those in front had the 

 least idea what would happen next. Crowds of natives 

 harassed us, especially in the van and the rear, and though 

 we kept as closely together as possible, we formed a long 

 column, the whole of which could not be seen at once. I was 

 always totally ignorant of what was going on with Count 

 Teleki's party, and he was in constant anxiety about me. We 

 were both, however, protected by a few warriors who did their 

 utmost to shield us and drive the natives back. I think, how- 

 ever, that our white skins were our best protection, and we had 

 already discovered that whatever danger our men might be in, 

 not a native was likely to dare to touch us ourselves. I am 

 pretty certain that we should never have achieved our transit 

 of Kikuyuland if there had not been a European at each end 

 of the caravan, and the white bandages I still had to wear had 

 also something to do with the effect I produced. 



Most of the natives became more friendly as the day wore 

 on. There were fewer weapons brandished, and we saw hardly 

 any arrows ready for shooting. As before stated, the Waki- 

 kuyu poison the tips of their arrows with morio sap, generally 

 protecting this sap with little strips of leather, removing the 

 leather when about to take aim, so that we could always tell 

 when there was real danger of the arrows being used against us. 



