KENYA MYSTERY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 12199, 10 March 1934, Page 9

KENYA MYSTERY

VICTIM OF MANAGE BLOOD

RITEB

Startling evidence that parts o'Kenya haw not yet merged from a savage state i.S' provided by an astonishing story recalling a tragedy of October; 1931, when a 20year.ffold Englislmian, Mr. Theodore Powys, formerly of Dorchester, disappeared,. Mr. Powys, who was the son el Mr. T. F. Powys, of' East-Cbaldon, Dorset, the anitnor' of some —webknown. novels and' stories ■of rural life, was the .manager of- tady Eleanor Cole’s farm in the Laikipia district. Bo set out. to search lor grazing grounds for farm stock (says? a correspondent of an English paper.)

Later The same day his’pony returned riderless, hut unscathed. A -search organised bv police and settlers resulted in the -discovery- ot portions of Mi-. Powys’s body.

The scanty evidence -.'of. tracks in the grass suggested that the likeliest tlicory was that the pony had shied at a lion, and that Mr. Powy? had been thrown off am] devoured A peculiar fact wap time Mr. Powys head was missing. ' ' i Rome, months after a native employed on a ,neighbouring farm statrvl that Air. Pow.v« had. been killed bv the Samburn. wild tribesmen whose country borders on the settled area of Laikinin. After further investigations which failed to subsit an tia to tbo inrfcivp’s story be was imprisoned for five months on a- charge of making e talso statement..

Air. Powys’s . rbull was recently found, s.omo . distance from the scene nl bis /death. Further lifShf, -still was throwr: on the mystery when the police, inquiring recently into a. series of savage murders in Laikipiaestablsbed t-hat they were the outcome of a- tribal initiation of young warriors, the essence of the rite being bhat they should wet Thenopears in human • bleed to prove their fitness for admission To a warrior state-

The police a'rrested two Samburu. Though it is possible; that' the ekuß' was overlooked in the search it seems likely- thaT, it was carried away in triumph to. a remote Sant-, burn village where it was exhibited, as evidence of a warrior’s daring.