Going on with my trading, I sent two or three cows out in different directions to be exchanged for sheep. It may have been a foolish thing to do, but I let the cows go out of my camp without sending any of my own men with them. I had done the same thing before, and the sheep had always been brought in, and it never occurred to me that it might not be so again; but on this occasion it happened otherwise: the sheep did not come in, and the natives refused to return the cattle. I was rather at a loss how to act, I had such a lot of ivory in the camp. I did not know whether it would be best to leave the camp and go after the cattle, or what to do. Whatever I did, however, must be done quickly, so I decided to leave a few men in camp—about ten askari and fifty Kikuyu—and go after the cattle. The most remarkable thing about the affair was that the cattle had been taken to exchange for sheep in charge of Karkerrie’s own men, and his son, and some of the men who went with him, had come back wounded, saying that they had lost the cattle. It was therefore now for me to find out what had really happened, and to recover the cattle.
The wounded men were not fit to go out to show me the place where the fight had taken place, but another of Karkerrie’s men offered to come with me and do so, so I saddled up my mule, and started off ahead of the main body of my men to the scene of the fight. On arriving there I found the place absolutely deserted, but, standing on a hill some little distance away, shouting and defying me, was a crowd of natives, who, however, did not attempt to come any nearer. As my own temper by this time was pretty well worked up, I pushed on till I got pretty close to them. They did not shift, so I slackened my pace to allow my own men to come up, and then advanced together to within about one hundred paces of them. Seeing, from their attitude and gestures, that they were preparing for a rush down on us, we fired a volley into them; several were killed, and a good many others must have been wounded. This apparently satisfied them, and they did not attempt to put up a fight, but ran away, shouting for their friends to help them to kill us. Realizing that it was useless to try to get the cows back from these people, and feeling rather uneasy about my own camp, I thought it advisable to return and see what was going on there; so I hurried back, and on nearing the camp I heard a lot of shouting and row going on. Being on my mule, I was able to push on quicker, and got ahead of the rest to see what was the matter, my men following as fast as they could. At the same time, I kept a sharp look out as I went on either side, in case there might be an ambush, and at intervals I fired my revolver into the bushes. On getting in sight of the camp, I found it was besieged by a crowd of howling savages, who, I soon discovered, were not Karkerrie’s men, but some natives from another tribe. Seeing me approach, and hearing my shout to encourage my men, they ceased the attack, and cleared off promptly into the bush. I found that two or three of my men had been slightly wounded by arrows, but none had been killed; while the other side had suffered pretty severely, quite a number of them having been killed. It appeared that these natives had heard of my absence, and thought it would be a good opportunity to attack the camp and get some loot. They had come upon it in a solid mass, and my men had only just managed to keep them at bay till we came up; in fact, the camp was practically surrounded when I got there, and it was impossible for the defenders to have held out much longer. Fortunately, I returned in time to prevent the enemy entering the camp, or all would have been lost.
The unfriendly natives having made themselves scarce, we settled down into camp again, and once more things began to go along in the old routine, as if we had had no unusual happenings.
That day the long-expected rain came, and with it a remarkable change in the manner of the people towards me. The day after they came in with lots of ivory and brought me presents of sheep and goats, telling me that I was a very great man, as I could fight and also make rain. They firmly believed that I was responsible for the coming of the rain, and asked me to live there altogether, offering to build a house for me and do anything I wished if I would only stay among them. Of course, I told them that I could not stay with them, and soon after brought my visit to Karkerrie to a close.
Having a lot of ivory, which I did not want to carry about the country with me, I secretly buried it at the edge of the forest, my intention being to go on to Wagombi, the big chief living at the foot of Mount Kenia. Before I left all the natives were on the best of terms with me, and said that they were willing to Pigasangi, while the chief Karkerrie expressed his willingness to make blood brotherhood with me. Katuni and Muga-wa-diga had returned to their villages some time previous to my departure from Karkerrie’s, and I learned afterwards that news of the happenings at Tato had reached my headquarters and that we had all been reported as killed.
I had heard a lot of talk about Wagombi, and was very anxious to visit him and, if possible, make friends with him, as my aim was to get all that country under control and put a stop to the fighting and bloodshed, so that it would be safe for caravans to pass through it and trade. The natives were beginning to see that I had their interests at heart and were beginning to like me. All the way along I had made friends, and I had hopes that, by means of the Pigasangi and blood brotherhood, I might get all the chiefs friendly and at peace with one another. The three ruling chiefs at that time were Karuri, Karkerrie, and Wagombi, and I felt that if I could once get these three to make friends I should soon be able to make the petty chiefs stop their squabbling. I had already got a friendly understanding with the two first-named chiefs, but Wagombi was by far the biggest and most influential of the three, and if I could get him to come in the matter was settled and the country too. My success, so far, was undoubtedly due to my having Kikuyu natives with me as my followers. Without them I should probably never have achieved anything at all, but the fact of my having what were practically their own people with me gave the chiefs I met confidence in me.
I parted on the best of terms with Karkerrie, and set out for Wagombi’s country. The country we were now passing through was much more sparsely inhabited, and we camped the first night at the headwaters of the Tana River, where, although no natives came to see me, I took the usual precautions for guarding the camp. Very shortly afterwards these precautions were amply justified, and I was made to realize that I was by no means in an entirely friendly country yet. Some of my men, going down without a guard to fetch water, were attacked by natives, and three of them speared to death. They had evidently been ambushed while going through a shamba by some natives who had immediately cleared off, and, though I made inquiries and found traces of a good many feet in the shamba, the murderers themselves were nowhere visible. We buried the three bodies that afternoon, and had no more disturbance during the night. The next morning we had struck camp for the final stage of the march to Wagombi’s when we saw a lot of natives doing a war-dance and shouting. Going to inquire what it was all about, I found that they had dug up the bodies of the three men we had buried the previous day, and were having a war-dance over them; so, turning away from such a gruesome spectacle, we resumed our march.
I had, of course, already sent messages on to Wagombi, to let him know that I was coming, and the news had spread among his own people that I was on the way to pay him a visit. Wagombi himself had come out a considerable distance to meet me, about ten miles from his own village. I found him a fine, tall fellow, in his bearing and appearance every inch a chief, and in his speech a good deal more brisk than any other Kikuyu I had met. He greeted me very heartily, shaking hands in the usual Kikuyu fashion—first spitting in the palm—and had quite a lot to say about himself and the country. He had with him quite a young lad, about ten years old, whom he introduced as his son and successor, and who seemed a very bright little fellow, of whom the chief appeared to be very proud. This lad is at the present time the chief of that district.
Wagombi brought no other followers with him but two or three old men. He himself wore a robe of monkey-skins, and was without any head-dress, while he carried a huge spear. As we proceeded towards the village he told me that he had heard a lot about me, and was very pleased to meet me. He said that he knew he had a very bad reputation for his treatment of people passing through his country, but that he was anxious to make friends with me, and was pleased that I had not brought any Arabs or Swahili with me, as he did not want any people of that sort in his country, and would kill the lot of them. Being some distance ahead of my party, and noticing that we were meeting large numbers of warriors as we went along the road, I sent word back to my people to keep a sharp look out, and told the chief about my men having been murdered at the last camp. He said that it had been done by his people all right, but that they had been acting absolutely on their own; in fact, he had sent messengers along our road to tell them not to interfere with us in any way, so that what had happened had been entirely against his wishes, and he meant to find out who had done it and punish them.
By the time we had got to his place we had quite a big following, and one old man who joined us by the way must have been the chief’s medicine man, as when he first met us he killed a sheep on the road, and at every stream we crossed he sprinkled a little of the dung taken from the sheep’s intestines on the river bank and in the stream. (This practice figures largely in the superstitious rites of the Kikuyu.) He also sprinkled some on the road as we went along, at the same time shouting a lot of gibberish. He had previously cut two rings out of the skin of a sheep, and given them to the chief and myself to wear on our right arms, a custom which, it seemed, was a sign of friendship.