808 MASAI, TURKANA SUK, NAXDI, ETC. 



They might even be styled ostentatiously naked in this respect, though I 

 have never known them to be guilty of any gesture of deliberate 

 indelicacy. Young warriors going to battle swathe round their waists as 

 many yards of red calico as they can get hold of, and will further throw 

 pieces of calico over their shoulders as capes. They also wear huge 

 mantles of birds' feathers, in shape and volume like the fur capes worn 

 by coachmen in cold weather. A great circle of ostrich plumes is often 

 worn round the face. When decorated for warfare, they tie fringes of 

 long white hair tightly below the knee, generally on one leg — the left. 

 This white hair is either derived from goats or from the skin of the 

 colobus monkey. Some of the eastern Masai make handsome capes of the 

 black and white colobus fur, which are worn over the chest. Unmarried 

 girls may wear a few bracelets, but as soon as a young Masai woman, or 

 " dito," is about to marry, she has coils of thick iron wire wound round her 

 legs (as in the illustration). She will also wear armlets and bracelets of 

 this same wire, and perhaps an additional armlet or two of ivory. Huge 

 ■coils of the same thick iron wire may be worn round the neck in addition 

 to the "catherine-wheel " ornaments and uncounted strings of beads. Or 

 she may have round her neck a great fringe of leather thongs, to which 

 are fastened large beads. Some of their supple leather garments are 

 charmingly sewn with beads as an edging. The young men do not 

 -disdain sometimes to clothe themselves in one of these huge cloaks of ox 

 hide, which may cover them from the neck to the ankles. The men wear 

 sandals of hide, especially when travelling. 



The chvellings of the Ma<ai are of two very distinct kinds. The 

 -agricultural Masai who are still to be found about Elgon and the south 

 ■end of Baringo (there are other relics of them in East Africa, at Taveita, 

 etc.) build houses very like those of their Bantu neighbours — round huts 

 made with walls of reeds or sticks, surmounted by a conical, grass- 

 thatched roof. The cattle-keeping Masai, on the contrary, build dwellings of 

 quite peculiar construction, unlike those of any other Negro tribe. These 

 are low, continuous houses (not more than six feet in height), which 

 may go round or nearly round the enclosure of the settlement. They are 

 fiat-roofed, and are built of a framework of sticks with strong partitions 

 dividing the continuous structure into separate compartments which are 

 separate dwellings, each furnished with a low, oblong door. A good deal 

 ol brushwood is worked into the sides and roofs of these rows of houses 

 to make a foundation which will retain the plaster of mud and cow-dung 

 which is next applied. The mud and cow-dung is thickly laid^on the fiat 

 roofs, and is not usually permeated by the rain. In the • villages of 

 the agricultural Masai there are, in addition to the houses, numerous 

 granaries holding supplies of corn and beans. The walls of these granaries 



