Scores of native villages of varying sizes are picturesquely planted among the banana groves and wooded valleys on this lower slope, each with its local chief, or sultan, and each tribe with its head sultan.
In a day's "trek" one meets many sultans with their more or less naked retinues, and every one of them spits on his hand, presses it to his forehead, and shakes hands with you.

It is the form of greeting among the Kikuyus, and, in my opinion, might be improved.

These people lead a happy pastoral life amid surroundings of exceptional beauty.

Above the cultivated _shambas_, or fields of sweet potatoes and tobacco and sugar and groves of bananas, comes a strip of low bush country.

It is a mile or two wide, scarcely ten feet high, and so dense that nothing but an elephant could force its way through the walls of vegetation.