CHAPTER V 
JUJA FARM: HIPPO AND LEOPARD 
At Juja Farm we were welcomed with the most 
generous hospitality by my fellow-countryman and his 
wife, Mr. and Mrs. W. N. McMillan. Selous had been 
staying with them, and one afternoon I had already 
ridden over from Sir Alfreds ranch to take tea with 
them at their other house, on the beautiful Mua Hills. 
Juja Farm lies on the edge of the Athi Plains, and 
the house stands near the junction of the Nairobi and 
Rewero Rivers. The house, like almost all East 
African houses, was of one story, a broad, vine-shaded 
veranda running around it. There were numerous out¬ 
buildings of every kind ; there were flocks and herds, 
cornfields, a vegetable garden, and, immediately in front 
of the house, a very pretty flower-garden, carefully 
tended by unsmiling Kikuyu savages. All day long 
these odd creatures worked at the grass and among the 
flower-beds. According to the custom of their tribe, 
their ears were slit so as to enable them to stretch the 
lobes to an almost incredible extent, and in these 
apertures they wore fantastically carved native orna¬ 
ments. One of them had been attracted by the shining 
surface of an empty tobacco-can, and he wore this in 
one ear to match the curiously carved wooden drum he 
carried in the other. Another, whose arms and legs 
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