NAIROBI AND MT. KENYA iii 



tinguished from their husbands and brothers, who very ostentatiously 

 wear no clothing for purposes of decency. The Masai have attracted 

 a great deal of attention ever since Joseph Thomson, the explorer, 

 together with Dr. Fischer (an equally distinguished explorer of Ger- 

 man nationality), laid bare to us Masailand. The Masai have been 

 the occasion of terrible havoc throughout East Africa by the attacks 

 they made on all settled peoples. At some unknown period in their' 

 racial career a very great part of the Masai decided they would not 

 till the fields any longer, but that they would take away the cattle of 

 other tribes not strong enough to resist them. This is one of the rea- 

 sons why so many of these beautiful plateaus of the present day are 

 absolutely devoid of human inhabitants except a few European settlers 

 who have come there. It was not that the negroes objected to the 

 climate ; they simply wiped one another out. This process has occurred 

 over and over again in many parts of Africa. No one has ever been so 

 cruel to the negro as the negro himself. The Masai are now great 

 cultivators. 



'Their towns are surrounded by belts of tall trees, mainly acacias, 

 some of which must be considerably over a hundred feet in height, with 

 green boughs and trunks and ever-present flaky films of pinnated foli- 

 age. In the rainy time of the year these trees are loaded with tiny 

 golden balls of flowers, like tassels of floss silk, which exhale a most 

 delicious perfume of honey. In the plains between the villages Grevy's 

 zebra and a few oryz antelopes scamper about, while golden and black 

 jackals hunt for small prey in broad daylight, with a constant whim- 

 pering. 



"Enormous baboons sit in the branches of the huge trees ready 

 to rifle the native crops at the least lack of vigilance on the part of the 

 boy guardians. Large herds of cattle and troops of isabella-colored 

 donkeys, with broad black shoulder stripes, go out in the morning to 

 graze, and return through a faint cloud of dust, which is turned golden 

 by the setting sun in the mellow evening, the cattle lowing and occa- 

 sionally fighting, the asses kicking, plunging, and biting one another. 



"After sunset, as the dusk rapidly thickens into night, forms like 

 misshapen, ghostly wolves will come from no one knows where, and 

 trot about the waste outside the village trees. They are the spotted 



