Whilst staying here I sent a present to Karkerrie, the chief of Tato, and also one to Wagombi. We were a good day’s march, in different directions, from each of these chiefs, and I told my messengers to say that I was coming into their country on a peaceful mission. Muga-wa-diga said that he would accompany me to Tato, where, he told me, there was a lot of ivory; so I decided to go to Tato first, and then go round to Wagombi’s country.
While at Muga-wa-diga’s I made the acquaintance of a young chief named Katuni, or the Lion, who was by far the tallest Kikuyu I had ever seen—being considerably over six feet in height—and got quite friendly with him, and he brought me, among other things, a lot of honey. All the Kikuyu keep bees, and you can see the hives hanging on the trees, sometimes five or six on a tree, all over the country. The hive is made out of a log of wood, hollowed out and shaped like a barrel, and the ends are headed up just as a barrel would be. They are about five feet long by eighteen inches in diameter. The natives ferment the honey to make a drink tasting very much like sharp cider, which they call njohi, and on which they manage to get very drunk, as it is highly intoxicating. It is generally made in very large quantities when the honey is gathered, and the headman of the village sends out an invitation to all the old men of the district to come in and have a big drinking bout, which generally ends in a drunken orgie, when they all start quarrelling and fighting with each other. The drink is kept in big calabashes, and the headman first pours out a hornful, which he spills on the ground, at the same time saying “Ngai,” meaning “To God”- -a ceremony reminding one of the ancient libations to the gods. This function over, the headman first drinks himself, to prove to his guests that there is no poison in the brew, and then the general drinking starts. A peculiar and somewhat unpleasant habit of theirs is to spit on their chests after drinking, but the reason for the practice no one could tell me.
I found a similar kind of drink to njohi among the Abyssinians, who call it tej, and the Kikuyu also have another drink, not quite so intoxicating as the njohi, and made from sugar-cane instead of honey.
By this time the messengers whom I had sent to Karkerrie with presents had returned, so we packed up and moved on towards Tato, Katuni deciding to accompany me, as well as Muga-wa-diga. The country continued thickly inhabited, and I noticed that the people seemed to own more stock than elsewhere. They did not take much notice of us, except on one occasion, when about half a dozen old men, who had been drinking njohi, greeted us, as we came round the shoulder of a hill, with a shower of arrows.
Arriving at last at Karkerrie’s village, we were met there by the chief himself and some of the elders of the tribe. The country had changed somewhat as we neared Tato, being less mountainous, and not so thickly cultivated, but the people owned enormous herds of cattle, sheep, and goats. They seemed more like the Masai than the Kikuyu, and undoubtedly have a good deal of Masai blood in their veins. From the reports I had heard as to their being such a bad lot, I was quite prepared for them to try to prevent my entering their country, but, possibly because they had heard a lot about me, and also on account of my having the medicine man Muga-wa-diga and the chief Katuni with me, they received me in a friendly way; so, finding a good place near the chief’s village, I pitched my camp.
I had brought about fifteen head of cattle with me, and, of course, had a lot of trade goods, so I opened up negotiations with the chief for some ivory. The value of cattle varies right through Africa, depending on the number of sheep in the country. Among the Kikuyu a cow is reckoned to be worth twenty sheep, whilst among the Caramoja and Sambura tribes—whom I visited later—it goes up as high as sixty sheep. I exchanged the cattle at the rate of twenty sheep for each, and when the natives came in with the ivory, I would give, say, the value of twenty sheep for a tusk measuring two hands. Ten rings of iron wire, or so many hands of cloth, equalled a sheep; so that if I bought ivory to the value of twenty sheep, I would give perhaps five sheep only and the rest in trade goods.
The iron wire used in these transactions was about the thickness of an ordinary telegraph wire, while the rings, ten of which were the value of a sheep, would be about nine inches in diameter, ten of them equivalent in value to about a shilling of our money. The standard value of a hand of ivory, in Karkerrie’s country, was thus ten sheep, or a hundred rings of iron wire, or sixty hands of cloth. In Wagombi’s country the prices were about half these, so that there a tusk weighing from twenty-five to thirty pounds could be bought for about a sovereign and, even allowing for the cost of transport, &c., at an average price of about nine shillings per pound there was a fairly good profit to be made on the deal. In the Wanderobo country, where most of the ivory was in the form of the heavier tusks of the bull elephant—that at Karkerrie’s and Wagombi’s being mostly from the females—I usually gave a bullock for a tusk weighing from eighty to ninety pounds.
A few details of the native system of measurement may be of interest. The hand, which is their standard of lineal measure, varies with the commodity to which it is applied, but in no case is it the same as our hand of four inches. In selling ivory the hand is the length of the forearm from the elbow, with the fist doubled. In measuring ivory a liberal allowance is made for the hollow portion at the root of the tusk,[[12]] and also for the point, neither of which are reckoned in the length. In buying or selling cloth the hand is practically the same as our yard, being measured from the centre of the chin to the tip of the fingers, with the arm stretched out.
[12]. The elephant tusk is more or less hollow for a third of its length at the thick end, measured when extracted from the skull.
Things were progressing very favourably, and there was any amount of ivory to be had, and I was buying it at the rate of two or three tusks a day, and at eight to ten shillings a pound each tusk would be worth from £10 to £15. I was at first at a loss to account for so much ivory being in the country, as the natives there do not hunt the elephant, but I found that the Wanderobo tribe, who live on the outskirts of the country, are great hunters; in fact, they live entirely by hunting; and the elephants wounded by them, and getting away, seek cover in the forest, where many of them die of their wounds, the wounds being made by poisoned weapons. The Kikuyu, going into the forest to find wild honey, find the ivory, and as no trader had been to the country to buy it before, this accounted for the quantity to be had on my first visit. These facts may also account for the remarkable stories one comes across sometimes of “elephant cemeteries.”[[13]] Certainly, in a long and varied experience of elephant-hunting in various parts of Africa I have never come across anything but the slaughter caused by the hand of man which could account for these so-called cemeteries, nor have any of the elephant-hunters I have met—and I know all the chief ones—been able to confirm the “cemetery” yarn.