1905.] on Native Races of the British East Africa Protectorate. 119 



ivestern kingdoms, but this is doubtless explained by their peculiar 

 organisation which placed the centre of gravity among the young 

 men. The chiefs, who are elective, have to retire from the ranks of 

 the warriors on being appointed, and though they may give advice, 

 have little power of restraining the young men, and are regarded as 

 liaving retired from the most serious business of life. They do not 

 appear to have ever attempted to acquire a position analogous to that 

 of the kings of Uganda and Unyoro ; and, outside the circle of warriors, 

 the most important person was not the chief but the medicine man, 

 who could foretell the result of expeditions. 



But though the Masai never founded any state, they were a for- 

 midable power in East Africa in the middle of the last century. AVe 

 know that they sacked Yanga on the coast, south of Mombasa, and 

 reached the middle of German East Africa. In the north they 

 raided at least as far as the Tana. They successfully asserted their 

 independence againt the Arab slave traders, and took tribute from all 

 travellers, including Europeans. Thomson, the first explorer of 

 Masailand, who traversed their country in I880, describes how they 

 entered his camp and ordered about the whole caravan as if they had 

 been the masters and he their slave. But bad times came upon them. 

 They were driven backv\'ards on the south by the warlike tribes of 

 German East Africa, and on the north by the Somalis. Rinderpest 

 attacked their cattle, and small-pox human beings. Then their im- 

 mediate neighbours, who had no reason to love them on account of 

 their raids in the past, fell upon them and greatly reduced their 

 numbers. At present, they are variously estimated at from 12,000 

 to 25,000 souls in our Protectorate, but there must be more than this 

 in German territory. 



The Masai have had a strong influence on the surrounding Bantu- 

 speaking races of the protectorates, who imitate their ways as far as 

 they are able or dare, and have probal:)ly received a considerable ad- 

 mixture of their blood. This is especially the case with the people of 

 Kikuyu, the high, fertile, wooded district which hes to the east of the 

 Rift valley. These people speak a Bantu language, and are agri- 

 culturists, but they approach the Masai in physique and are mure 

 energetic and intelligent than the Wakamba or Wanyika. In times 

 of trouble, when pasturage is scant, or a tribe gets liroken up on 

 account of internal dissension, the Masai have a tendency to settle 

 down, and this has probably happened repeatedly in the Kikuyu 

 country, with the result that a hy])rid race has been formed. 



I' must not leave the Masai without alluding to a theory put 

 forward recently by a German writer. Captain Merker, who was for 

 some years an administrator in East Africa, that they are a Semitic 

 people who separated from the Jews at some remote period before the 

 latter occupied Palestine. This theory is supported by a series of 

 traditions collected from the Masai, which show an astonishing re- 

 semblance to the earlier portions of the Bible. The most competent 



