TWO PARTIES OF MASAI MOEAN 



387 



market, and on the morning of the 3rd Maktnbu returned with 

 his hundred men. 



As usual I received a letter from the Count, who was 

 camped two marches off on the Gnaso JSTyiro. He had met on 

 the first day a party of eighty Masai moran who were on their 

 way to attack the Wakikuyu. As this was very much against 

 our interests. Count Teleki tried to dissuade them from making 

 a raid, and when they said they had eaten nothing for two 

 days and must get oxen he promised to give them some him- 

 self. So they followed his caravan towards his first stopping- 

 place on the most southerly tributary of the Guaso JSTyiro. 

 Just before they reached it, however, another troop of moran, 

 this time some 150 strong, appeared, and Count Teleki had an 

 amusing opportunity of seeing the courage of the dreaded 

 cattle-lifters tested. Each party, taking the other for Wa- 

 kikuyu, showed the greatest alarm ; the new-comers withdrew 

 into the bush, whilst the warriors with the caravan refused to 

 advance another step, even after the Count had made them 

 look through a telescope at the supj)Osed Wakikuyu and 

 proved that they were Masai like themselves. Not until 

 Count Teleki promised to protect them in case of an attack 

 would they budge an inch. Arrived in camp, the two parties 

 fraternised and made up for previous terrors by wild dancing 

 and singing. Having consumed a couple of oxen they all went 

 off together in a north-westerly direction. 



This turned out to be but a manoeuvre, for on the afternoon 

 of Maktubu's return seven Kikuyu men came into the Ndoro 

 camp, evidently in a great state of terror, for not until they 

 were inside the palisade did they restore their arrows to the 

 quivers. Silently they squatted down and then begged for a 

 shauri, in which they told us that they had come to explain 

 the breaking of their promise about the market. Two days 

 before some hundred of their men and women who were on the 



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