Hitherto, as a rule, only one of the man-eaters had made the attack and had done the foraging, while the other waited outside in the bush; but now they began to change their tactics, entering the bomas together and each seizing a victim. In this way two Swahili porters were killed during the last week of November 1898, one being immediately carried off and devoured. The other was heard moaning for a long time, and when his terrified companions at last summoned up sufficient courage to go to his assistance, they found him stuck fast in the bushes of the boma, through which for once the lion had apparently been unable to drag him.
Within a few days of this the two brutes made a most ferocious attack on the largest camp in the section, which for safety’s sake was situated within a stone’s throw of Tsavo Station and close to a Permanent Way Inspector’s iron hut. Suddenly in the dead of night the two man-eaters burst in among the terrified workmen, and even from my boma, some distance away, I could plainly hear the panic-stricken shrieking of the coolies. Then followed cries of “They’ve taken him; they’ve taken him,” as the brutes carried off their unfortunate victim and began their horrible feast close beside the camp.
At last the climax came. Ensconced in his tree, Patterson heard “the rustling of a large body forcing its way through the bush”.
“The man-eater,” I thought to myself; “surely to-night my luck will change and I shall bag one of the brutes.” Profound silence again succeeded; I sat on my eyrie like a statue, every nerve tense with excitement. Very soon, however, all doubt as to the presence of the lion was dispelled. A deep long-drawn sigh – sure sign of hunger – came up from the bushes, and the rustling commenced again as he cautiously advanced. In a moment or two a sudden stop, followed by an angry growl, told me that my presence had been noticed; and I began to fear that disappointment awaited me once more.
But no; matters quickly took an unexpected turn. The hunter became the hunted; and instead of either making off or coming for the bait prepared for him, the lion began stealthily to stalk me! For about two hours he horrified me by slowly creeping round and round my crazy structure, gradually edging his way nearer and nearer. Every moment I expected him to rush it; and the staging had not been constructed with an eye to such a possibility. If one of the rather flimsy poles should break, or if the lion could spring the twelve feet which separated me from the ground … the thought was scarcely a pleasant one….
In a short while I heard the lion begin to creep stealthily towards me. I could barely make out his form as he crouched among the whitish undergrowth; but I saw enough for my purpose, and before he could come any nearer, I took careful aim and pulled the trigger. The sound of the shot was at once followed by a most terrific roar, and then I could hear him leaping about in all directions. I was no longer able to see him, however, as his first bound had taken him into the thick bush; but to make assurance doubly sure, I kept blazing away in the direction in which I heard him plunging about. At length came a series of mighty groans, gradually subsiding into deep sighs, and finally ceasing altogether; and I felt convinced that one of the “devils” who had so long harried us would trouble us no more.
The Man-Eaters of Tsavo J. H. Patterson.
Patterson shot the second man-eater a few weeks later. Both were big lions in good condition.
From the edge of the escarpment at mile 362 the line was manoeuvred down an almost sheer drop of over 1,500 feet into the Rift Valley; then up the other side through dense forests and over deep ravines to Mau Summit at mile 489 and an altitude of 8,700 feet. Down the other side the line was taken through the hilly country of the Nandi tribe, whose warriors found steel rails and telegraph wires an irresistible temptation.
It must not be supposed that the Nandi had any idea of cutting our communications, or even of committing acts of political hostility. Their operations were simply burglarious. A railway line appeals in the strangest way to both sexes of African natives. Telegraph wires are regarded as a most ornamental and desirable article of female attire, and the male sex find, in various bolts and rivets used to secure the rails, perfect weapons obviously intended for braining their enemies. One can imagine what thefts would be committed on a European railway if the telegraph wires were pearl necklaces and the rails first-rate sporting guns, and it is not surprising that the Nandi yielded to the temptation, but rather that within a comparatively short time they were broken of the habit.
The East Africa Protectorate Sir Charles Eliot.
Breaking the Nandi of the habit took ten years and five military expeditions. Despite these disruptions and beset by many troubles, the railway continued on its way.
First, a wave of dysentery swept the party. On its heels came widespread recurrences of malaria. Half the railhead work force, including Preston, was laid low. Then the skies reopened with a fury that rapidly turned the already spongy terrain of western Kavirondo into a jellied consommé. The newly laid embankments became so soft that materials trains had to be unloaded while moving; if a locomotive stopped, it would simply topple over on its side and sink into the morass. Jackson described one such train near Kibigori, “coming slowly and cautiously along, rocking from side to side, heaving gently up and down like a ship in a choppy sea-way, and squirting liquid mud for ten feet on each side of it, from under the sleepers, after the manner of a water-cart”. And what little platelaying could be done in these conditions was further curtailed by new outbreaks of tribal banditry. Making little effort at concealment, Nandi warriors treated the camp as if it were a hardware store as they carried off rails, sleepers, keys and tools, while the fever-broken workers, virtually defenceless even at the best of times, could only look on dully.
Nandi buccaneering had a more telling effect than simply to delay the advance of the tracks. The tribe had already stolen so much wire that the Telegraph Department found itself unable to overtake the rails, and the result was almost to cripple delivery of materials. Without telegraphic communications, the two trains serving railhead from the forward supply base at Muhoroni had to operate on a rigidly constricted schedule if collisions were to be avoided. Neither train was allowed to leave either station until the other had completed its run….
By mid-December, the rains had ended, the Nandi had vanished into the hills, the telegraph line had finally reached railhead, and nearly all the workers had recovered from their fevers. Once again the tracks moved forward, and on Friday, 20 December 1901, Preston was able to write that the men had put down “the record length of 10,400 feet of line which brought us to Port Florence Station”. At four o’clock in the afternoon of the following day, there was a brief ceremony. As Preston and a few other officials of the line looked on, Florence Preston put aside her parasol, took up a keying hammer and clumsily drove home the last key in the last rail of Britain’s newest imperial highway. Only a few minutes later, one of the supply trains clanked wearily to the end of the line at the very edge of the lake. One almost imagines the locomotive puffing: “I knew I could … I knew I could….”
The Lunatic Express Charles Miller.
The statistics, perhaps, need grouping. The line was 582 miles long. It was begun on 5 August 1896 on the Mombasa mainland and it reached Port Florence on Lake Victoria on 19 December 1901. The capital cost was £5,502,592. The cost in lives was 2,493 Asians and 5 whites. 31,983 coolies were imported from India. Of these 6,454 were invalided back to India and 16,312 were repatriated or dismissed. 6,724 Indians remained in East Africa to become the main progenitors of the present Asian population. 43 stations were built and 22 construction locomotives worn out. The bridging included the Salisbury Bridge (joining the island of Mombasa to the mainland) of 21 spans of 60-foot girders, 35 viaducts on the Kikuyu and the Mau Escarpments; and 1,280 smaller bridges and culverts.
The Iron Snake Ronald Hardy.
The construction of the railway created a demand for victuals on which to feed the men who were laying it. There was plenty of food in Kikuyu country, but fear of ambushes and poisoned arrows kept traders out.
1898 John Boyes, a twenty-four-year-old Yorkshireman who had gone to sea as a cabin-boy, arrived in Mombasa in an Arab dhow. Two years later he set out from Naivasha with seven porters, a Maasai guide and a rifle, to reach the shunned Kikuyu country across the Aberdare (Nyandarua) range of mountains.
Continuing our march, we arrived, on the third day, in sight of the first native village. I had heard some one cutting wood in the forest off our road, and the news of our coming had spread. At the first sight of us the natives had started running away, but we soon heard the native war-cry being taken up from hill to hill round about, and could catch occasional glimpses of the natives themselves as they gathered in force towards the village. They were certainly a wild-looking lot, with their bodies smeared all over with grease and red clay, or, in some cases, a kind of whitewash, in which patterns were drawn according to the fancy of each individual, while fastened to the leg was a rattle, with an iron ball inside, which, as they moved about, made a noise very much like a railway train. Many of them wore wonderful head-dresses, made of the skin of the colobus monkey, and all were armed with spears and shields….
In a short time quite five hundred warriors, fully armed, were drawn up outside the village, and, getting within speaking distance, I told my Masai interpreter to tell them that I had come to see the chief of the district….
Instead of attacking Boyes and his small party, the chief, Karuri, sought his help in defending his village from an onslaught by warriors of a rival clan.
My duty was clear. These people had brought the trouble on themselves by befriending me, and the least I could do was to give them such help as I could….
Seizing my rifle, I made for the scene of the fight, accompanied by a crowd of yelling savages, delighted at my decision. When I arrived the row was at its height and the sight of the hand-to-hand conflict among the warriors, surrounded by the burning huts, was a stirring one. Seeing the reinforcements, headed by myself, coming up, the attackers began to waver, and when I had fired a few shots with effect, finally turned tail and bolted. After pursuing them for some distance, to make sure that they were completely scattered, the triumphant warriors returned to the village, and made quite a hero of me, being convinced that their victory was entirely due to my help. This incident was of the greatest value to me, as it fully established my reputation as a useful member of the community, and they became very friendly. I learned that they had had a lot of trouble with this particular clan, who had frequently raided them, killing many of their men, and carrying off their cattle, and sometimes their women.
After this Karuri came to ask me if I would stop in his country, and I told him I would think about it. I said that I had other work to do, but that if he would sell me flour and other foodstuffs I would come back to him. I told him that the flour was for friends of mine, who were coming along the caravan road. He said that he did not want any more white people in the country. I could stop as long as I liked myself, and his people would be my friends, but they did not mean to have any strangers. I explained that though my friends were coming along the caravan road they had no intention or desire to enter the country. This explanation seemed to satisfy them, and I told them that I would not decide at once about staying in the country, but that when I had taken the flour to my friends I would come back and talk matters over with them. They then asked what I had to give in exchange for the flour, and I produced a bottle of iodoform, some of which I had used on their wounds after the fight with good effect. They thought it was a great medicine, and all wanted some, and in exchange for a small quantity, wrapped in paper, would give from ten to twenty pounds of flour.
They looked upon me as a great medicine man, and members of the tribe came to me daily to be cured of various complaints during the fortnight I stayed with them while the food I wanted was being collected and brought in. When it was all in I found that I had about two hundred loads, and the trouble then was to find porters to carry it out of the country; but by dint of persuasion I finally succeeded in impressing a number of the people into my service, and started off with my loads.
On account of my little difference with Captain Gorges, I decided not to go to Naivasha, but to carry my loads down towards the Kedong. As the route to the Kedong Valley led through the Masai country, my men would not go right through with it, so I set them to build a hut on the caravan road, where I established a store for the flour, and within a few days I sold the lot to the railway surveyors and caravans for about thirty rupees a load, which made me highly satisfied with the result of my first venture among the Kikuyu.
Returning to Karuri’s, Boyes entrenched himself as a de facto super-chief, training and arming a force of warriors who subdued other sections of the tribe who were at odds with his ally. He dispensed justice, made roads, built stores and introduced English vegetables, fruit trees and black wattle. About once a month a caravan of 500 to 1,000 men went down to Naivasha carrying food for the railway workers. Such happy days could not last. When rumours reached the Protectorate’s officials that a freebooting trader was exercising sovereign rights and flying the Union Jack over his encampment, they despatched two of their officers to bring to book the presumptuous trader. Boyes’ askaris were stripped of their insignia and he himself placed under arrest and charged with the serious crime of dacoity.
My greatest crime of all in the eyes of these officials, however, was the fact that I was flying the Union Jack, which my men carried with them, as they were accustomed to do on all their expeditions. I mildly put the question to the officer as to whether he expected me to fly the Russian flag, or any other except that of my own country, but it seemed that, to the official mind, it was a most serious offence for an Englishman to display the flag under which he had been born and for which he had fought, unless he held some position in the official oligarchy which ruled, or was in the habit of thinking it ruled, the country….
The next four days were spent in collecting evidence against me, and as nobody could be persuaded to go to my headquarters to collect evidence against me on the spot, Captain Longfield himself finally went, taking with him the whole of his troops, while during his absence Mr Hall gathered all the information he could from the chiefs and other natives at Mberri….
When they had, as they thought, satisfactorily arranged for sufficient evidence to secure my conviction, the Kikuyu who had come in with me had their arms restored to them, and I and my personal bodyguard, together with about two hundred native witnesses, were sent down to Nairobi under charge of an escort of about ten native soldiers, commanded by a black sergeant! The situation was ludicrously Gilbertian. Here was I, a (so-called) dangerous outlaw, being sent down to be tried for my life on a series of awful indictments, through a country in which I had only to lift a finger to call an army of savage warriors to my assistance. I was accompanied by a personal following twenty times as numerous as the guard of ten natives who kept me prisoner, and who trembled every time they passed a native village lest the inhabitants should rush out and wipe them out of existence; while on the first day out the humour of the situation was considerably increased by the sergeant in charge of the escort handing me the large blue envelope containing the statement of the evidence against me, with a request that I would take charge of it for him, as he was afraid he might lose it! I must say that I thoroughly appreciated the humour of the whole affair. I was the only mounted man in the whole outfit, still having my mule, and it struck me as distinctly amusing that I should be practically taking myself down to Nairobi, to be tried for my life, with the whole of the evidence under my arm!
John Boyes, King of the Wa-kikuyu, ed. C. W. L. Bulpett.
John Boyes was brought to trial, acquitted on all charges, and resumed his trading activities among the Kikuyu, though without his private army. Later he took to farming. He died in Nairobi, a respected family man, in 1951.
To cement his friendship with the chief, John Boyes had made blood-brotherhood with Karuri. This was a widely practised ceremony with many local varia
tions. The missionary Stuart Watt described his exchange of pledges with the Kikuyu chief Watiti.
Soon the chief made his appearance, with about fifty of his elderly advisers, and a passage was opened up for them through the multitude until they reached my tent. Once more I had to submit to the usual spitting process, and was amazed at the secretive power of the chief’s salivary glands. We heartily exchanged salutations and grasped each other’s hand; and, after some little time, the ceremony of making blood-brotherhood was commenced.
Another large sheep was presented to me for the occasion. This was killed by one of my men, and a small portion of meat from the loin and a piece of the liver and the heart were put on the camp fire to roast. While this was being done the elders placed the chief and myself face to face, in close proximity. My head-man and interpreter stood by my chair, while around the chief, who was seated on his stool, were several elders.
The man who had been set apart to officiate in the ceremony of the day then brought from the fire the three roasted pieces of flesh and cut each in two. With a piece of sharpened iron, used for shaving the head, this adept of the blade made a small gash on my breast, from which the blood oozed freely. He then made a similar incision on the chest of the chief, and as the red blood flowed down over his ebony skin he took three small pieces of the different kinds of meat, and dipping them in the blood of the chief he gave them to me to eat, while the other three pieces, which he besmeared with my blood, were handed to the chief.
Nine Faces Of Kenya Page 9