Besides its huts, each family has two or three granaries for its supply of Indian corn. These are made with thatched roofs, wicker walls and wicker floors, and are raised a foot or eighteen inches off the ground. They are usually about as big around as a hogshead and six feet high. The Kikuyus are practically vegetarians. They live on corn, beans, sweet potatoes, and a kind of millet. They have a few cattle and some sheep, but they consider them too valuable to be slaughtered and only eat them when the cattle are sick or become injured in some way and have to be killed. They have no chickens, and eat neither fowls nor eggs. This is because, in the past, the crowing of cocks would give away the locality of a village, thereby bringing down its enemies and the slave traders upon it. These people have many dishes like ours. They eat roasting ears off the cob, and they boil beans and corn together to make a kind of succotash. They have also a gruel made of millet and milk, and if one of the family becomes sick he is sometimes given mutton broth. In their cooking they use clay jars which they rest upon stones above fires built on the ground. They use gourds for carrying milk and water, and bags of woven bark ranging in size from a pint to four bushels are used for all sorts of purposes. The larger ones serve for the transportation of their grain to the markets. The Kikuyu looks upon the females of his family as so much available capital. If a man has fifteen or twenty wives, he is supposed to be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I hear that many of the chiefs have a dozen or more, and that since the British have begun to exploit the forests, the more industrious of the native men have been rapidly increasing their families. A good girl, large and healthy, will bring as much as fifty sheep. A maiden is supposed to be ready for sale at twelve years, and twenty dollars in cattle or sheep is an average price. For this sum the woman should be large, well formed, and fairly good looking. Homely or lean girls go cheap and often remain single, in which case they have to work for their parents. A man may pay down ten sheep and agree to bring in the balance from month to month as he and his wives earn the money for them. He goes into the woods and cuts down trees, being paid so much per stick. If he works hard, he may make three or four dollars a month, and if, in addition, he has several women to help him, his income may be doubled or trebled.