Government send an expedition into my country to take over the
administration—Go with my followers to meet the Government officials—Am
asked to disarm my followers by the Government officials, who are in a
state of panic—Consent to this to allay their fears, and am then put
under arrest—Am charged with “dacoity”- -Am sent down to Mombasa to be
tried, and placed in the jail—Am released on bail—Tried and acquitted—I
am appointed intelligence officer, and guide to a Government expedition
into the Kikuyu country
I had been living and trading in the Kikuyu country for something like
two and a half years now, and during the whole of that time had had no
white visitors in the country, when one day the news was brought in that
some white men had come into my neighbourhood. News of an event of this
sort of course spreads very quickly, and the natives reported to me that
at Mberri, about thirty miles to the east of my headquarters, two white
men were camping with a lot of troops, and had commenced to build a
fort. When I had made a few inquiries, I found that they were Government
officials, who had come out to take over the country, and when I was
satisfied of this, as soon as I could spare the time, I called all the
chiefs together and told them that these two white men were evidently
officers of the Government and had come to take the country over, and
that as it had hitherto fallen to my lot to settle quarrels and disputes
and generally manage the affairs of the whole country, so now, I
explained, these new-comers had been sent for that purpose and to take
my place. I gave the chiefs some days’ notice to be ready to go up with
me, and said that I would take them up and introduce them to the
officials.
When the time came to start for Mberri all the chiefs did not turn up,
but I found that a good number of the thirty-six who at that time looked
to me as their head were ready to accompany me. Each chief brought some
of his followers with him, and we started off with about one thousand
men, and, as it was too far for a day’s march, I camped after travelling
about three-parts of the way to the fort. Resuming our journey the next
morning, we had nearly covered the remaining portion of the distance,
when it suddenly struck me that if such a large body of armed natives
were seen approaching the fort without any notice of their coming having
been received, they might easily be mistaken for a hostile force coming
to attack the new station, so I called a halt about two or three miles
from the fort, and, leaving the natives behind, went on ahead to report
their arrival.
On reaching Mberri I met one of the officers in charge of the fort, a
Mr. Hall, who turned out to be a man I knew very well, having met him
previously at Fort Smith, when he was in charge of that station; while
Captain Longfield, who was with him, was also known to me through my
having been in communication with him on several occasions respecting
certain happenings in the Kikuyu country. The two officials received me
in a friendly way and invited me to have some breakfast with them.
Having reported to them that I had brought in a number of friendly
chiefs to introduce to them, and explained my mission, I sent a man back
to my people to tell them to come on in, and was still at breakfast when
I heard a lot of shouting and talking, and went out to see what was the
matter. On asking what the fuss was about, I was told that my askaris
were being placed under arrest, and when I inquired what they had been
doing, was told that they had no right to be in uniform. As a matter of
fact they were not wearing a Government uniform, but as they were all
dressed alike in khaki, this was made a pretext for a display of
officiousness on the part of the officials, and the officer proceeded to
cut some buttons off their tunics, and the rank badges off the arms of
the sergeant and corporal, which, as I alone was responsible for their
dress, was a needlessly insulting piece of red tape. I had previously
ordered my men to disarm, and they submitted very quietly to the
insulting disfigurement of their clothes. 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.
In the meantime a fearful row was going on amongst my people and the
other Kikuyu who lived near Mberri, who had joined them. Mr. Hall and
Captain Longfield were in a terrible state of panic. They asked me why I
had brought all those men there, saying that there was bound to be a
fight, and no end of trouble. I told them that there would be no trouble
with my men, as I could manage them all right. They asked me to disarm
them, and I agreed to do so, provided that they would be responsible for
their weapons, and on their undertaking to do so, I explained to the
chiefs that it was the white men’s wish that they should disarm. This
they very reluctantly consented to do, and gave up their weapons on my
assuring them that they would be restored to them.
When my men were all disarmed, and their weapons had been safely stowed
in a tent, under the care of a sentry, the official announced that I was
to consider myself a prisoner as well. To this I merely replied, “All
right,” feeling that if I were to express the feelings of utter contempt
I possessed at that moment for these two gallant specimens of British
officialdom, it would be the worse for my people and would only give an
excuse for ill-treatment. I could see too much unpleasantness ahead for
them as it was, if these two gentlemen were fairly representative of the
class to whom the future administration of the country was to be
entrusted, if I acted with precipitation and gave way to my natural
feelings against the mean trick that had been played on me. I was told
that I should be allowed to retain my cook and personal servants, and
that no restraint would be put upon my movements, provided that I would
give my word of honour not to attempt to clear out. As my real offence
was that I had brought into a state of order a country which, previous
to my coming, had such a reputation that no official would set foot
across the border if he could help it, I had no cause to fear the
results of an investigation into my conduct, and I made up my mind to
await calmly the termination of this comedy. Besides, I thought that my
personal influence might very likely be needed to prevent some
“regrettable occurrence.” Both the officials were in such a state of
unreasoning fear of the natives that it was more than likely that they
would be guilty of some piece of foolishness which might set the whole
country in a blaze. So I retired to my tent and amused myself for a
great part of the day with a gramophone which I had brought with me. Of
course, my men could not understand what had happened, and, fortunately,
none of them knew that I was under arrest.
In the meantime my men were being questioned as to what had happened in
the Kikuyu country during the time that I had been there, and the
following day an askari came to my tent and presented me with a lengthy
document, written on blue paper, which proved to be a summons to appear
that day before the officers in charge of the fort. The summons read
something after the following style: “I, Francis George Hall, charge
you, John Boyes, that during your residence in the Kenia district you
waged war, set shauris, personated Government, went on six punitive
expeditions, and committed dacoity.” I must confess that I read over
this formidable list of charges with some amusement, though I was well
aware that any one of them, if proved, meant capital punishment. There
was one item on the list that I could not make out, and I took the first
opportunity of inquiring the meaning of the word “dacoity,” which was a
term I had never heard used in the country before. I remembered reading
a book called “The Last of the Dacoits,” and it struck me that either
the title of the book was wrong, or that the official, in his anxiety to
fulfil his instructions to pile up as heavy a list of crimes against me
as possible, had allowed his imagination to run away with him. It was
explained to me that “Dacoit” was an Indian term, meaning a native
outlaw.
At the time appointed I presented myself at the “court-house,” which was
a primitively-constructed mud-hut, furnished with two chairs and a
table, and as the two former were occupied by Mr. Hall and Captain
Longfield, there was nothing left for me but to make myself as
comfortable as possible on the corner of the table, which I did, much to
the scandal of those two important officials. The charge having been
read over to me, I was cautioned in the same manner that an English
bobby cautions a prisoner, that anything I might say, &c., and then I
was asked what I had to say. I told them that I certainly had nothing to
say to them one way or the other, and would reserve my defence, and the
proceedings—which were of a purely formal character—were then over and I
returned to my tent.
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!
During the journey, which, though only sixty miles in a straight line,
took us five days, as we had to pick a path—there being then no road—and
to avoid several swamps, some of the soldiers tried to make my men carry
their loads; but I thought that this was going a little too far, and
would not allow anything of the sort. We saw plenty of game along the
road, and also some lions, but as I was, of course, without my rifle, I
could not do any shooting.
When we arrived at Nairobi I presented myself at the Government
headquarters, which were then in a little tin shanty, now used by some
Indian coolies as a wash-house, while the remainder of the party sat
down outside whilst I went in to see the official. The Goanese clerk who
inquired my business told me that the Sub-Commissioner was very busy
just then and I could not see him. It was quite remarkable how very busy
these officials always were when any one, not of the official or
missionary class, wanted to see them. I had always experienced the same
difficulty in getting an interview, and no doubt the clerk thought that
I had come to make one of my usual complaints. On this occasion I did
not happen to be in a hurry, so telling the clerk that I would call back
in about an hour’s time, I went for a stroll round the town, and took
the opportunity of having a look at Nairobi. On my return I was received
by the Sub-Commissioner, who asked me what I wanted, so I handed him the
packet containing the statement of evidence, and when he had looked
through it he said that he would make arrangements at once to have me
sent down to Mombasa.
Things were done in a different way here, and I quickly realized the
change when I got outside the office and found myself surrounded by a
guard of six Indian soldiers with fixed bayonets.
That same day I was taken by the afternoon train to Mombasa, under
charge of the escort of Indian soldiers, with a white officer in
command, and on arriving there I was handed over to another white
official. After some considerable delay, the papers apparently not being
in order in some respect, I was duly admitted to the Mombasa jail, which
was the old Portuguese fort—a massive building, whose frowning walls
rise sheer above the cliff commanding the entrance to Mombasa. Many a
time, in days gone by, has the tide of battle rolled around these grim
walls, the many sanguinary conflicts in which it has figured having
earned for Mombasa the title of the “Isle of War.” Looked at from the
outside, the fort is a gloomy-looking place, with its huge entrance
gates guarded by sentries; but its extent is best judged from the
inside, and I found that there was plenty of room within its massive
walls; while the apartment allotted to my use proved to be much more
comfortable than I had expected—being, in fact, quite on a par with, if
it did not surpass, the accommodation which the only hotel in Mombasa at
that time could provide. I found that I was perfectly free to roam about
the fort at will, though, of course, I was not allowed to pass outside
the gates.
I had been incarcerated in the fort for some weeks before any of my
friends got to know of my arrest, and then one of them, Mr. Claude
Smith, also a trader and hunter, like myself, hearing of my position,
came down to Mombasa to see me. After having paid me a visit, he got the
only lawyer in the country, who was a Parsee, to conduct my defence;
while a few days later these two managed to secure my release, on a bail
of 10,000 rupees, and I left the fort and went up to Nairobi.
The bare statement that Claude Smith came down to Mombasa to see me, and
secured my release on 10,000 rupees bail, will probably not convey the
idea to the general reader that he did anything calling for special
notice. But, when the facts of the case are taken into consideration, it
will be seen that the comradeship which existed among us early pioneers
in that wild, official-ridden territory, was of a kind which does not
usually flourish among the stay-at-home, arm-chair critics who, from the
comfort of the club fireside or the smug atmosphere of the Exeter Hall
platform, condemn the traders and settlers as irredeemable blackguards
or, as one complacent official described them to a gathering of
uneducated natives, as _washenzi Uliya_, the translation of which is
“the savages of Europe.” In the first place, although I had no claim on
him whatever, he came down some four hundred miles from Naivasha, where
he was hunting, leaving his expedition for the purpose, and found the
10,000 rupees bail—which had to be actually deposited—from his own
pocket, and remained with me until the case was dismissed—thus
sacrificing many weeks of valuable time in my interests. Further than
all this, he incurred the bitter enmity of the official who had
instigated the whole business against me, and who never rested until he
had fabricated a similar charge against my friend, needless to say with
the result of triumphal acquittal for both of us.
When my trial came on, I found that all the charges against me, except
the one of dacoity, had been withdrawn; which fact only served to
confirm the information I had received—were any confirmation needed—as
to the origin of, and reason for, the whole conspiracy against me. The
trial was by judge and jury, and after hearing the evidence against me
the court acquitted me, and I left the court-house, as the judge said,
without a stain on my character—the judge even going so far as to say
that he did not understand why the case had been brought at all, and,
finally, apologising to me for the waste of my valuable time!
As to why the case had been brought I could have given the judge a good
deal of information which would have enlightened him considerably, but
as I had come so triumphantly out of the matter, I did not see that I
had anything to gain by stirring up the mud. At that time there were not
more than a dozen independent white men in the country; all the rest
were Government officials, missionaries, or men engaged in the
construction of the Uganda Railway, and, for some reason or other, the
governing class were always bitterly hostile to the commercial and
hunting element, and took every occasion of impressing upon us that we
were not wanted in the country. Further than this, the class of men
holding the Government appointments at that time were by no means
representative of the best elements even of officialdom; being, in many
cases, unsuccessful traders with a little backstairs influence, or the
least useful class of Army officer, with absolutely no experience of the
people or the country and no administrative training.[15] This state of
affairs is by no means peculiar to British East Africa, but has been
experienced in most of our other African Crown Colonies, and, indeed,
prevailed in many of them up to quite recently, and may do so yet for
all I know. Fortunately, so far as British East Africa is concerned,
there are now good prospects of the carrying out of a saner and more
intelligent policy under the guidance of the new Governor, Sir Percy
Girouard. If the colony is ever to become anything more than a happy
hunting ground for official inefficients, every assistance must be given
to those who are willing to invest their money in the country, and petty
officialism must be put in its proper place in the machinery of
government.
-----
Footnote 15:
It must be remembered that the administration of the country was just
starting. The Government had to put up with what officials they could
get.
-----
In my case there were many mixed motives underlying the conspiracy to
get me ousted from the Kikuyu country, and if possible from the
dependency, but it is perhaps better that I should be silent about all
this. One reason, perhaps, for desiring my removal was the apprehension
that existed out there that the authorities at home might think that
after all the man who single-handed had reduced to peace and order a
country into which no white man had ever successfully entered before,
might not be a bad one to entrust with its future administration in the
interests of the Empire. Of course, such an intrusion into the sacred
official class by a common trader, who actually understood the
natives—as far as a white man may—and was able to exercise a kindly
influence over them, was to be prevented at all hazards, even at the
cost of the said trader’s life if need be.
For my part, although no man likes to give up practically supreme power,
even among savages, I had always recognized that the day must come—and
had been at some trouble to prepare the natives for it—when the
administration of the country would be duly taken over by the official
bureaucracy, and my only aim was to assist the officials as far as
possible when that day came, so that the change might be brought about
with as little disturbance to the existing state of order as possible.
Unfortunately, the petty spite and official arrogance and inefficiency
of certain individuals defeated my object, and within a comparatively
short period I was grieved to find that my old friend and blood brother,
Wagombi, irritated at the tactless way in which he was treated by the
new officials, was carrying fire and sword through the whole country,
and raiding almost up to the walls of the boma where the new
Administrator lay trembling and afraid to venture a quarter of a mile
outside his own camp.
However, as I have already said, all those who have the true interests
of British East Africa at heart are hoping for a better state of things
under the experienced and enlightened administration of Sir Percy
Girouard.
After the fiasco of my trial, I returned to Karuri’s, and continued my
food-buying, taking the supplies into Naivasha as before. I still
experienced the same trouble with the Kalyera natives on the way down
with the food for the Government stations, and finally the matter was
reported to the Governor, Sir Charles Eliot, who resided at Zanzibar,
which was then the headquarters of the Government. As a result of these
representations, an expedition was sent out under Captain Wake, of the
East African Rifles, with Mr. McLellan as civil officer, and I was asked
to accompany them as guide and intelligence officer. I was only too
pleased to have this opportunity of proving to the Government my
readiness to help, and I willingly agreed to go with the expedition.