On the 19th of October the rain ceased for a while, to our immense satisfaction. During the morning Jumbi returned from Munithu and Zura with the remainder of the men. He had seen Bei-Munithu and demanded that our loads should be given to him. He was met by an insolent refusal. In addition, Bei-Munithu sent an insulting and threatening message to the effect that “If the Wasungu themselves came to the door of his house with their guns, he would not give up the loads!”
Jumbi also reported that food was extremely plentiful in both Munithu and M’thara, but the inhabitants of those places, acting under instructions from their chiefs, point blank refused to sell us any.
ORNAMENTS WORN BY A’KIKUYU WOMEN.
| 1, 2, 3, 4. | Leather belts ornamented with beads and cowrie shells. |
| 5, 6, 7, 8. | Girdles of iron chain and beadwork. |
| 9, 10. | Collars of iron chain and beadwork. |
| 11, 12, 13, 14. | Necklaces of twisted iron, brass and copper wire, with pendant chain. |
| 15, 16. | Armlets of thick brass wire. |
The situation was now serious, and after dinner that evening we held a consultation to decide what was to be done. Leaving M’thara without a supply of food was out of the question, and to stay in M’thara was to court disaster. I therefore proposed to El Hakim that I should proceed to Munithu on the morrow with an armed party, leaving him in charge of the camp, and make a demonstration in force at Munithu, and see if that would not bring old Bei Munithu to his senses, and George volunteered to accompany me. As both El Hakim and I considered that such a proceeding would not entail any serious risk, he acquiesced in my proposal. We therefore determined that El Hakim should stay in command of the camp with one or two men—who, with himself, would, he hoped, be sufficient to defend it should it be attacked in our absence—and that George and I, with all the men who could be spared, should go over and endeavour to convince Bei-Munithu and Co. that we were better as friends than enemies.
Accordingly at noon on the following day George and I started for Munithu. We had sixteen men armed with Sniders, but we were terribly short of ammunition, possessing not more than seven cartridges per man, a fact which made the undertaking rather more hazardous. Considered afterwards, in cold blood, it seems to me to have been foolish in the extreme to have attempted to penetrate into a hostile country, so thickly populated as Munithu, with so few men and so little ammunition; but at the same time there was no help for it. Luckily, both George and I had a fair number of cartridges. I, as usual, carried my ·303, but George, whose rifle had once or twice missed fire, did not see the fun of risking his life with a weapon which might fail him at a critical moment; so he carried my 20-bore shot-gun with a supply of ball cartridges. These ball cartridges contained 2½ drams of powder, which propelled a spherical leaden bullet about the size of an ordinary marble, and a double-barrelled gun using them was a very ugly weapon up to a couple of hundred yards.
We pushed on till sundown, and camped at a distance from Bei-Munithu’s village, and turned in early, as we needed all our energy for the morrow.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] “After Big Game in Central Africa,” by Edward Foa, F.R.G.S. (Translation from the French by Frederic Lees), 1899, pp. 59, 60.