Whilst staying here I sent a present to Karkerrie, the chief of Tato, and also one to Wagombi. We were a good day’s march, in different directions, from each of these chiefs, and I told my messengers to say that I was coming into their country on a peaceful mission. Muga-wa-diga said that he would accompany me to Tato, where, he told me, there was a lot of ivory; so I decided to go to Tato first, and then go round to Wagombi’s country. While at Muga-wa-diga’s I made the acquaintance of a young chief named Katuni, or the Lion, who was by far the tallest Kikuyu I had ever seen—being considerably over six feet in height—and got quite friendly with him, and he brought me, among other things, a lot of honey. All the Kikuyu keep bees, and you can see the hives hanging on the trees, sometimes five or six on a tree, all over the country. The hive is made out of a log of wood, hollowed out and shaped like a barrel, and the ends are headed up just as a barrel would be. They are about five feet long by eighteen inches in diameter. The natives ferment the honey to make a drink tasting very much like sharp cider, which they call njohi, and on which they manage to get very drunk, as it is highly intoxicating. It is generally made in very large quantities when the honey is gathered, and the headman of the village sends out an invitation to all the old men of the district to come in and have a big drinking bout, which generally ends in a drunken orgie, when they all start quarrelling and fighting with each other. The drink is kept in big calabashes, and the headman first pours out a hornful, which he spills on the ground, at the same time saying “Ngai,” meaning “To God”- -a ceremony reminding one of the ancient libations to the gods. This function over, the headman first drinks himself, to prove to his guests that there is no poison in the brew, and then the general drinking starts. A peculiar and somewhat unpleasant habit of theirs is to spit on their chests after drinking, but the reason for the practice no one could tell me. I found a similar kind of drink to njohi among the Abyssinians, who call it _tej_, and the Kikuyu also have another drink, not quite so intoxicating as the njohi, and made from sugar-cane instead of honey. By this time the messengers whom I had sent to Karkerrie with presents had returned, so we packed up and moved on towards Tato, Katuni deciding to accompany me, as well as Muga-wa-diga. The country continued thickly inhabited, and I noticed that the people seemed to own more stock than elsewhere. They did not take much notice of us, except on one occasion, when about half a dozen old men, who had been drinking njohi, greeted us, as we came round the shoulder of a hill, with a shower of arrows.