V 
THE KIKUYU 
55 
Lastly, we come to the most serious defect in the 
Kikuyu character, and that is his extraordinary dis¬ 
honesty. The Kikuyu will steal any mortal thing he 
can. I believe that beside him even the famous 1 
Welshman is immaculate ! He will take the crops from 
your fields, the stores from your storeroom, the fruit 
from your trees, and the cattle from your yard. With 
it all he is so cunning. The settler has a heap of 
firewood neatly cut and stacked. It stands behind 
his house and having finished the supply that he has 
within the same he goes to his stack to replenish it; 
seizing a log he pulls and to his astonishment and 
disgust the whole edifice collapses! His Kikuyu 
boys have very carefully abstracted the whole of the 
interior, leaving merely sufficient outer crust to keep 
a semblance of the original heap. I have seen the 
same thing with regard to maize stored on a platform 
with thin-meshed wire walls. The mesh has been 
very carefully cut and then replaced so that the 
removed square cannot be noticed, and then night by 
night cobs have been removed from the interior and 
the wall of grain built up again and the square of wire 
replaced. Again, a tunnel has with infinite trouble 
been dug beneath the wall of a shed and a calf con¬ 
tained within removed! 
However, with regard to petty thefts, vigilance and 
severe punishment will do much; but the serious 
problem is with regard to the theft of cattle, and 
more especially of sheep. Where flocks and herds 
are large it is almost impossible to detect or prevent 
this form of crime, which, I fear, is on the increase. 
The police have proved powerless to deal with it, and 
farmers have considered the advisability of taking the 
1 Reference is made to one “ Taffy ” and not to any later prototype. 
