The chief, once accepted, is autocratic in the ordinary details of government, trying all cases himself and pronouncing sentence, from which there is no appeal; but in matters of moment affecting the general welfare of the people he is aided in coming to a decision by the counsels of the assembled elders of his district, a body something after the fashion of the old Saxon Witan. For ordinary infractions of the law, or offences against his authority as chief, he pronounced such punishment as his discretion and judgment dictated; but for cases of wounding or murder a regular scale of fines was laid down—fining being the usual punishment, except in cases of open rebellion. Open rebellion generally entailed a descent on the offenders by the chief’s warriors, and the wiping out of the rebellious villages and their inhabitants. For an ordinary case of wounding the fine was ten sheep, while for the murder of a woman it was thirty sheep—the price which her husband would have had to pay for her on marriage—and for a man a hundred sheep. The tenure of land is very simple, the freehold being vested in the man who takes the trouble to make the clearing, and as there is plenty of space for all, and the wants of the people are few, anything in the shape of agrarian agitation is unknown; in fact, during the whole of my stay in the country I never knew any instance of a dispute over land. It must be borne in mind that many great changes have taken place in the Kikuyu country, and in British East Africa generally, since the period, some ten years since, covered by this book. In the days when I started on my first contract for the conveyance of food to the troops engaged in the suppression of the Soudanese mutiny, the spot on which Nairobi, the present capital of the colony, stands was simply a patch of swampy ground on the edge of the plain which extends to the borders of the hilly Kikuyu country. Here the railway construction people pitched one of their settlements and put up a station, and from this has risen the town of some fifteen thousand inhabitants, of whom fully one thousand are white, a larger proportion than can be found in any settlement of the same age on the continent of Africa, while I may add that everything points to an increased rather than a diminished rate of progression! Nairobi is no bush settlement, where one expects to “rough it” as part of the ordinary daily routine. On leaving the train one can engage a cab, or even a motor, to drive one to a good hotel; if you know any one in the town, you can be put up for an excellent club; while one’s commercial requirements are met by a fine post-office, banks of good standing, and stores where one may obtain anything that the most fastidious European or savage tastes can require.