THE .MA,-Al,-> WLRE AMUSED AT THE WAV I HELD ONE OF THEII 

 DANGEROUS SPEARS 



XXXII 



A Race of Warlike Shepherds : the Masai 



SO long ago as 1896 I found in conversation with my 

 iriend Merker, now ca|)tain in the imperidl colonial 

 police, that he and I were agreed in holding that the 

 Masai, generally regarded until then as belonging to the 

 race of Ham, were quite curiously and unmistakably 

 Semitic in their physiognomy. 



Since then my Iriend has published an imposing work,^ 

 the outcome ot many years of study, in which he has 

 expounded his view that the Masai, long before the period 

 of the oldest records we have of^ Egypt, had come from 

 Arabia to Africa, there eventually to settle down upon the 

 eastern velt. He has sought to demonstrate, moreover, 

 that the Masai — adherents to a strictly monotheistical 

 religion — were the descendants of that oldest branch of 

 the Semitic famiK" which was in possession of the Biblical 



^ The Masai : au Etlinographical Study of an East AJrican Semitic 

 Race. Berlin 1904. Dietrich Riemer. 



716 



