By the time we had got to his place we had quite a big following, and one old man who joined us by the way must have been the chief’s medicine man, as when he first met us he killed a sheep on the road, and at every stream we crossed he sprinkled a little of the dung taken from the sheep’s intestines on the river bank and in the stream. (This practice figures largely in the superstitious rites of the Kikuyu.) He also sprinkled some on the road as we went along, at the same time shouting a lot of gibberish. He had previously cut two rings out of the skin of a sheep, and given them to the chief and myself to wear on our right arms, a custom which, it seemed, was a sign of friendship.
Wagombi’s kraal was right at the top of a smaller mountain which rises at the foot of Mount Kenia, and from this vantage-ground a splendid view could be obtained of the country for many miles around. The morning after our arrival I had an opportunity of taking in the full beauty of the scene from our lofty situation. Spread out as far as the eye could reach was a panoramic view of the Kikuyu country through which I had travelled, showing the glittering streams threading their way through deep valleys, the hills on either side being clothed with trees, and dotted here and there with villages; while, where the country was more open, cattle and sheep could be seen quietly grazing, and the cultivated clearings could be seen at intervals. Viewed as a whole, the landscape presented a rugged appearance, with deep clefts between the mountains, innumerable streams, and thick forest land; while between the mountains on the right could be dimly made out the edge of the Laikipia Plain. We were on the lower slopes of Kenia, and for a considerable distance up the mountain is clothed with a thick forest, so dense that, except in a few places, it is quite impenetrable.
The most careless mind must be awed by the majesty of Mount Kenia, as the eye ranges over its huge bulk, from the wooded slopes near the foot to its summit, rising many thousands of feet in the air, crowned with a circle of perpetual snow, glistening in the rays of the sun. Surrounded by Nature in her grandest form, Wagombi might be pardoned for a conscious pride in his magnificent heritage, which, owing nothing to the art of the landscape gardener, yet far surpassed the beauties of any estate to be found in the civilized countries of the world.