Arriving at last at Karkerrie’s village, we were met there by the chief himself and some of the elders of the tribe. The country had changed somewhat as we neared Tato, being less mountainous, and not so thickly cultivated, but the people owned enormous herds of cattle, sheep, and goats. They seemed more like the Masai than the Kikuyu, and undoubtedly have a good deal of Masai blood in their veins. From the reports I had heard as to their being such a bad lot, I was quite prepared for them to try to prevent my entering their country, but, possibly because they had heard a lot about me, and also on account of my having the medicine man Muga-wa-diga and the chief Katuni with me, they received me in a friendly way; so, finding a good place near the chief’s village, I pitched my camp. I had brought about fifteen head of cattle with me, and, of course, had a lot of trade goods, so I opened up negotiations with the chief for some ivory. The value of cattle varies right through Africa, depending on the number of sheep in the country. Among the Kikuyu a cow is reckoned to be worth twenty sheep, whilst among the Caramoja and Sambura tribes—whom I visited later—it goes up as high as sixty sheep. I exchanged the cattle at the rate of twenty sheep for each, and when the natives came in with the ivory, I would give, say, the value of twenty sheep for a tusk measuring two hands. Ten rings of iron wire, or so many hands of cloth, equalled a sheep; so that if I bought ivory to the value of twenty sheep, I would give perhaps five sheep only and the rest in trade goods. The iron wire used in these transactions was about the thickness of an ordinary telegraph wire, while the rings, ten of which were the value of a sheep, would be about nine inches in diameter, ten of them equivalent in value to about a shilling of our money. The standard value of a hand of ivory, in Karkerrie’s country, was thus ten sheep, or a hundred rings of iron wire, or sixty hands of cloth. In Wagombi’s country the prices were about half these, so that there a tusk weighing from twenty-five to thirty pounds could be bought for about a sovereign and, even allowing for the cost of transport, &c., at an average price of about nine shillings per pound there was a fairly good profit to be made on the deal. In the Wanderobo country, where most of the ivory was in the form of the heavier tusks of the bull elephant—that at Karkerrie’s and Wagombi’s being mostly from the females—I usually gave a bullock for a tusk weighing from eighty to ninety pounds.