A White King in East Africa: The Remarkable Adventures of John Boyes, Trader and Soldier of Fortune, Who Became King of the Savage Wa-KikuyuBoyes, John
History
A White King in East Africa: The Remarkable Adventures of John Boyes, Trader and Soldier of Fortune, Who Became King of the Savage Wa-Kikuyu
Boyes, John
Africa, East; Kikuyu (African people)
Returning to my home in the mountains, I settled down at Karuri’s with a
prospect of calmer days before me than I had experienced during the
previous twelve months, during which I had been getting the country
under control, and now I had time to set about improving the country
itself, and got the natives to work making better roads and building
bridges across the rivers, and generally increasing the facilities for
getting about the country. I also made a very large garden close to my
camp, in which I planted the seeds which I had bought at Naivasha, and
had the satisfaction of finding that almost every English vegetable
would grow well in that climate, while the black wattle I had planted
also flourished splendidly, and has, I believe, at the present day grown
into quite a little forest.
With the opening up of the country by the railway, new difficulties
arose. My own success in the country induced many traders, Somali, Arab,
and Swahili, to try their fortunes with the natives, and so long as they
stuck to legitimate trading, all went well, but they adopted methods
which soon created a strong feeling of discontent throughout the
country. In many cases these traders, who had very little in the way of
trade goods, represented themselves as working for Karanjai—which was
the native name by which I was known—and instead of doing any trading,
billeted themselves on the natives, making them keep them, and would
often even steal the sheep and other belongings of the Kikuyu. The
natives repeatedly complained to me of the misbehaviour of these
so-called traders, and when I told them that they were not my people,
and that I had nothing to do with them, the natives sometimes retaliated
on these men who were thus robbing them. Wandering Swahili, and the
other rascals of their kind, came complaining to me. I told them that if
they could not get on with the natives the best thing for them to do was
to leave the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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