Next morning we struck camp and resumed our journey, the chief accompanying me to the boundary of his territory. On the way he told me that he had had a lot of trouble with the neighbouring tribes, particularly the people I was going to visit, the Kalyera, with whom he was in a state of continual warfare. He parted from me with a serious warning to be very careful, as the people I should next meet were very treacherous.
We had started about 6 p.m., and about five hours’ march brought us to the village of the next chief, named Caranja, whose looks I did not like from the first, as he had a most truculent and treacherous appearance, so that, although he shook hands with me readily when we met, I did not trust him, and ordered my men to keep a particularly strict guard, and forbade them to go into any of the villages. We camped outside, and nothing of note happened, except that the chief was most interested in my gun, and asked me to fire a few shots at a tree to show him how it worked—a request with which I complied.
Starting at daybreak the next morning, the chief himself accompanied me as guide for some distance, and when beyond his jurisdiction I was surprised to find that the people had all deserted the villages along our road. I imagine that what had happened was that the chief had sent messengers on ahead to say that I was coming to fight them and raid their country; or, possibly, the reason was that I had now got to the edge of the Kalyera country, and they thought that I had come to inquire into their behaviour in killing my people and to demand compensation. Although we shouted to them as we went along that we had not come to fight them and waved bundles of grass to show that our intentions were peaceful, none of them would come near us, and we did not interfere with them.
All the country round was thickly populated and under cultivation, like the districts we had already passed through. The chief who had been guiding us had returned to his own village, and we were making very slow progress through an unknown country when two natives came in sight, whom we found had been sent by another chief to guide us to his place. They said it was not very far away, but the native has very little idea of distance, and I thought we were never going to arrive at his village. I knew from experience that a native will lead you on for two or three days with the assurance that you are close to your destination. Our guides kept telling us that it was just over the next hill, and when we had got over that it was always just over the next. I was beginning to get tired, and thought about camping for the night, when the guides pointed out a village in the distance, which I could just make out with my glasses, so we continued our journey, and arrived close to the village about dusk. There was a lot of shouting and hallooing, but we did not go in and camped close together outside. Practically every man was on guard that night, as we knew nothing about the people, and could not be sure that they would be friendly, but though we heard a lot of shouting during the night nothing happened, and in the morning the chief came to see me. As soon as I saw him I liked the look of him. He seemed a young man, though it is very difficult to tell the age of natives—they never know it themselves—but I took him to be about thirty. He seemed to be quite different from any Kikuyu I had ever seen, his features being more of a European type, and he had not the thick lips of the ordinary native, whilst his skin was more of a copper colour than black. He also seemed a good deal more intelligent than the others I had met, and his people were not in the least afraid, as most of the others had been.