We got along all right until the hill-side began to get very steep, and I found the boys could not hold the wagon. They started to let go, and I shouted to them to get the stones in place. Their stupidity would have been laughable if my position had not been so serious. Instead of putting the stones in front of the wheels, they put them at the back, as they had been taught to do when we were getting the wagons up the hill, and seemed surprised when the wagon ran away from the stones, and before I could make them understand what I wanted, the boys at the ropes had let go. Being unable to let go myself, I had to hang on like grim death, while the wagon went tearing down the slope. One minute I was bumping on the road and the next I was in the air, with trees and other things whizzing past. By making the best use of my chances when my feet touched the ground, I managed to keep the wagon on the road until very near the bottom of the hill, when it ran over a hole and capsized. Luckily very little damage was done, but it took us the whole day to get all the wagons and animals down, and when we camped at night every one was thoroughly tired out with the hard day’s work. The valley was very fertile, and made a splendid grazing ground for cattle, the Masai regularly bringing their stock there to graze at certain seasons of the year, and at the time of our arrival a large number of them were camping on the spot with their herds of stock. While out shooting one day in the valley, one of my porters showed me the spot where he said a trader named Dick, with five or six hundred of his men, had been murdered by the Masai. Dick himself had shot seventeen of his assailants before he was killed. I went to examine the ground, and found it covered with so large a number of skulls and bones that I was inclined to think that the boy had used less than the usual native amount of exaggeration in telling the story. So far as I know, no attempt has ever been made to punish the Masai for this massacre. Another of the porters, on my asking him how he had lost an eye, told me that it had been torn out by the Masai—formerly a common practice of theirs when they caught any Arab or Swahili traders passing through their country. They were habitually very offensive to strangers, generally forcing them to camp a considerable distance from water, which they then proceeded to make them buy, their practice being to stick a spear into the ground, and make the trader pay in goods, brass and iron wire, and beads, as the case might be, to the height of the spear, before they would let him pass. As I have said, there were a number of Masai in the valley, but I had no trouble with them; many of them came into camp with milk, which I bought from them. I found that it had a distinctly smoky taste, due to the gourds in which it is carried being hung over the fire to clean them.