She nodded and smiled at them.
Thereupon they sent one of their number away. The messenger
returned after a few moments carrying a bunch of the small eating
bananas which she laid at our feet. Billy fished some beads out
of her saddle bags, and presented them. Friendly relations having
been thus fully established, two or three of the women scurried
hastily away, to return a few moments later each with her small
child. To these infants they carefully and earnestly pointed out
Billy and her wonders, talking in a tongue unknown to us. The
admonition undoubtedly ran something like this:
"Now, my child, look well at this: for when you get to be a very
old person you will be able to look back at the day when with
your own eyes you beheld a white woman. See all the strange
things she wears-and HASN'T she a funny face?"
We offered these bung-eyed and totally naked youngsters various
bribes in the way of beads, the tinfoil from chocolate, and even
a small piece of the chocolate itself. Most of them howled and
hid their faces against their mothers. The mothers looked
scandalized, and hypocritically astounded, and mortified.
They made remarks, still in an unknown language, but which much
past experience enabled me to translate very readily:
"I don't know what has got into little Willie," was the drift of
it. "I have never known him to act this way before. Why, only
yesterday I was saying to his father that it really seemed as
though that child NEVER cried-"
It made me feel quite friendly and at home.
Now at last came two marvellous and magnificent personages before
whom the women and children drew back to a respectful distance.
These potentates squatted down and smiled at us engagingly.
Evidently this was a really important couple, so we called up
Simba, who knew the language, and had a talk.
They were old men, straight, and very tall, with the hawk-faced,
high-headed dignity of the true aristocrat. Their robes were
voluminous, of some short-haired skins, beautifully embroidered.
Around their arms were armlets of polished buffalo horn. They
wore most elaborate ear ornaments, and long cased marquise rings
extending well beyond the first joints of the fingers. Very fine
old gentlemen. They were quite unarmed.
After appropriate greetings, we learned that these were the chief
and his prime minister of a nearby village hidden in the jungle.
We exchanged polite phrases; then offered tobacco. This was
accepted. From the jungle came a youth carrying more bananas. We
indicated our pleasure. The old men arose with great dignity and
departed, sweeping the women and children before them.
We rode on. Our acquired retinue, which had waited at a
respectful distance, went on too. I suppose they must have
desired the prestige of being attached to Our Persons. In the
depths of the forest Billy succumbed to the temptation to
bargain, and made her first trade. Her prize was a long water
gourd strapped with leather and decorated with cowry shells. Our
boys were completely scandalized at the price she paid for it, so
I fear the wily savage got ahead of her.
About the middle of the afternoon we sat down to wait for the
safari to catch up. It would never do to cheat our boys out of
their anticipated grand entrance to the Government post at Meru.
We finally debouched from the forest to the great clearing at the
head of a most impressive procession, flags flying, oryx horns
blowing, boys chanting and beating the sides of their loads with
the safari sticks. As there happened to be gathered, at this
time, several thousand of warriors for the purpose of a council,
or shauri, with the District Commissioner we had just the
audience to delight our barbaric hearts.
(b) MERU
The Government post at Meru is situated in a clearing won from the
forest on the first gentle slopes of Kenia's ranges. The clearing
is a very large one, and on it the grass grows green and short,
like a lawn. It resembles, as much as anything else, the rolling,
beautiful downs of a first-class country club, and the illusion
is enhanced by the Commissioner's house among some trees atop a
hill. Well-kept roadways railed with rustic fences lead from the
house to the native quarters lying in the hollow and to the
Government offices atop another hill. Then also there are the
quarters of the Nubian troops; round low houses with conical
grass roofs.
These, and the presence everywhere of savages, rather take away
from the first country-club effect. A corral seemed full of a
seething mob of natives; we found later that this was the market,
a place of exchange. Groups wandered idly here and there across
the greensward; and other groups sat in circles under the shade
of trees, each man's spear stuck in the ground behind him. At
stated points were the Nubians, fine, tall, black, soldierly men,
with red fez, khaki shirt, and short breeches, bare knees and
feet, spiral puttees, and a broad red sash of webbing. One of
these soldiers assigned us a place to camp. We directed our
safari there, and then immediately rode over to pay our respects
to the Commissioner.
The latter, Horne by name, greeted us with the utmost cordiality,
and offered us cool drinks. Then we accompanied him to a grand
shauri or council of chiefs.
Horne was a little chap, dressed in flannels and a big slouch
hat, carrying only a light rawhide whip, with very little of the
dignity and "side" usually considered necessary in dealing with
wild natives. The post at Meru had been established only two
years, among a people that had always been very difficult, and
had only recently ceased open hostilities.
