I gathered, from conversations with Karuri and the older men of the village, that at one time the country was believed to have been covered with a vast forest, inhabited by a race of pigmies, whom they called Maswatch-wanya. These people did not cultivate the land, but lived by hunting, and the legend said that the wife of a Masai, who was very badly treated by her husband, was in the habit of taking refuge in the forest, with her little boy, from his cruelty. At first she used merely to stay in the forest for a time, and then return to her husband again; but at last his treatment of her became so bad that she left him altogether, and took refuge with the pigmies, and it was believed that the Kikuyu race were the descendants of the offspring of this woman. There is certainly a good deal of evidence to support the tradition, as they undoubtedly have Masai blood, use the same kind of weapons and shield, and in each case worship a god they call Ngai. I have also heard them singing Masai war-songs when going out to fight, and in a very large number of instances the physical resemblance between the two races is very strong. I stayed some weeks with them this time, and found that there was a good deal of fighting going on, and that many of the friendly natives were being killed through the hostility to me of the neighbouring chiefs and their people. They strongly resented my intrusion into the country, and any of the natives known to be friendly towards me, or wearing any of the cloth I had given them, were immediately marked down for attack. This sort of thing went on for some time, and they began to think that, because I took no action against their enemies, I was afraid of them. There were threats to kill me every day, and one night, after some of their villages had been burned, and a lot of the people killed, they came to me and asked me to take their part, saying that they had always been friendly towards me, and that was why these people were making war on them and robbing them. I therefore sent a messenger to the offending chief, to say that if he did not return the stolen property, and pay compensation for the murders he had committed, I should have to go and compel him to do so. (The law of the country is that for every man killed a payment of one hundred sheep shall be made, and for every woman thirty sheep.) The chief simply returned an insulting message to the effect that we were afraid of him, and the next time he came he would kill me too.