44 
NEW AFRICA. 
MURDER OF THOMAS LONDON. 
Although generally peaceable, the Wanyika sometimes allow their avarice 
to overcome their scruples and caution; and perhaps this should not be charged 
up to them as a conclusive evidence of their savagery. Perhaps their latest 
crime against the human life of a white was the murder of Thomas London, 
a British hunter in the region not far from the coast. Being hungry and 
thirsty, he approached a village and paid a native boy a silver dollar for a 
coeoanut. Such a large sum for so small a favor aroused the cupidity of an 
old chief, Makelinga, and when Mr. London had laid aside his gun and was 
bending over to wash his hands, the native leader, with three confederates, 
sprung upon him and stabbed him to death. Only five dollars were found 
upon the dead; but the murderers were tried and convicted at Mombasa and 
hung on the scene of their crime, August 28, 1908. 
THE WAKAMBA, OF THE ATHI BASIN. 
The Wakamba have the distinction of being not only the largest tribe of 
East Africa, but the only one which has never acknowledged permanent defeat 
at the hands of the Masai. They are both farmers and herdsmen. Like most 
African tribes they are very superstitious, having their hoodoos against witch¬ 
ery and their official witch doctors, who are sometimes more powerful than 
the chiefs. After harvest the doctor always makes his rounds of the villages, 
receives gifts and endeavors to “smell out” the witch in each community who 
has been responsible for the sudden deaths and other misfortunes of the year. 
When she (for it is generally a woman) has been located the villagers gradu¬ 
ally desert her, leaving behind only one grim, warrior, who, at the first favor¬ 
able opportunity, pins her to the ground with his spear and leaves her to a 
death of keen agony or slow torture. In case her death struggles are too 
prolonged, the villagers return and stone her to death. A village near Mach- 
akos station seems to have been a favorite location for enforcing “Kinyolla,” 
as this hideous custom is known, some forty women having met their fate 
there within a year. 
THE MASAI, WITH CLAWS CUT. 
The once warlike Masai, not unlike the Sioux of the United States in their 
heyday, are now virtually pacified and kept within the bounds of their reserva¬ 
tion on the Laikipia plateau, northwest of Mount Kenia and northeast of 
