Finally, one of the greatest difficulties which hampers the development of our African colonies, and renders the task of the administrator who really does know something of the work he has taken in hand a heart-breaking one, is the utter inability of the good people at home to realize the absolutely irrefutable truth contained in Kipling’s statement that “East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” The average missionary and new-comer to Africa generally arrives with his mind stored with the statements contained in the reports of missionary societies or the books of well-to-do globe-trotters, and is firmly convinced that he knows all there is to be known about the country and its people. When he has been a year or two in the country he will, if he has any remnants of common sense left, begin to realize that it is about time he began to try to learn something of the people among whom his lot is cast; while at the end of ten, fifteen, or more years he will frankly confess the utter impossibility of the white man ever being able to, as an able African administrator once put it, “get inside the negro’s skin,” and really know him thoroughly. I question if there have ever, in the history of the world, been twenty pure-bred whites altogether who have really known the native of Africa, and if you hear a man boasting that he “knows the nigger thoroughly,” you may safely put him down as a man of very limited experience of the negroid races.

The ultimate solution of the negro problem lies, not in the “poor coloured brother” direction, but in training him in handicrafts, and thus making him a useful, productive member of the community; and as soon as this fact is recognized, and carried to its logical result, so soon will the “colour problem”- -which at present weighs heavily on the mind of every thinking white man who really realizes what it means—cease to be the ever-present bogey of our African Administration.

And here for the moment I will end my story. It was my intention, when I first started to write this account of my experiences among the Kikuyu, to have extended the period of this book to the times of my more recent adventures on the African continent. I found, however, that space would not allow me to include all I wished to put down in writing in one small volume. I have, I think, much more to relate which might be of interest to the general reader. I have spent the last ten years of my life either exploring in the wilds of the Dark Continent or have been occupied as a professional hunter of big game, and should this book of mine find any favour with the public, I hope in a short time to recommence my labours as an author again.

My next experience immediately after the facts related in this book was to take the Governor of British East Africa, Sir Charles Eliot, on a personally conducted tour to the scenes of my adventures and throughout the wilder parts of his domain. Later, many stirring adventures with lion and elephant have been my lot. My wanderings have led me across the desert from British East Africa into Abyssinia, into the Congo territory and elsewhere. I hope some of the adventures which befell me in these travels may, in the future, prove interesting to the public.

MAP OF THE
WA-KIKUYU LAND

INDEX