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THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 





" The physical appearance of the unregenerate robber Masai," says Sir Harry Johnston, 



"is splendid. It is a treat to the anthropological student to gaze on such magnificent examples 



of the fighting-man. It is an example of one side of our multiform nature pushed to an 



exclusive and supreme development. The Masai warrior is the result of the development of 



man with a beautiful animal. To call him God-like, as we do the Greek ideals, would be 



silly and inappropriate as much so as seeing divinity in a well-bred race-horse or an Alderney 



cow. To compare him with the statues of Apollo is unfair to the one and the other. If you 



could find Apollo represented with huge-lobed ears, fang-like teeth, 



high cheek-bones, and a woolly crop, not to mention other peculiar 



and ungraceful developments, then you might aptly compare his 



ideal representation with the living Masai. The full-grown Masai 



of pure blood is generally 6 feet in height by the age of seventeen, 



though at that time he is often a spindly and cumbersome and 



ungraceful hobbledehoy. Three years, however, of an exclusive 



diet of milk, blood, and half-raw beef-steaks, combined with a rigorous 



training in warlike and athletic exercises, have developed him into 



a sinewy, muscular man, of admirable proportions, broad of chest, 



with a smallish head, a graceful neck, and limbs whose muscles 



seem hard as iron. There is no fat on his body. I cannot say 



that his hands and feet are always well shaped. Their faces are 



somewhat Mongoloid in look at first sight. The rather narrow, 



slanting eyes, the prominent cheek-bones, and the pointed chin 



suggest that impression. On the other hand, the nose is often 



beautifully shaped, with high bridge and delicately chiselled nostrils, 



which obey sensitively the passing feelings of their owner, quiver- 

 ing and dilating with pride and rage, or widening and relaxing 



with good-humour. Their heads are often singularly round and 



broad for Africans. The hair is certainly longer and less frizzly 



than among the true Negroes, though at the same time this may 

 be only due to the careful and continual combing out it undergoes, 

 and its straightening with a thick paste of clay and fat. It is after 

 all a Negro's wool, and is not longer nor more abundant, certainly, 

 than the regular Papuan crops of hair which the Bantu people of 

 the Upper Congo have been found to possess." 



The ears are large, and the lobes are distended by ivory or 

 wooden disks, loops of iron chain, or brass wire coiled like 

 Catherine-wheels. The lips are thin, and there is a triangular space 

 filed between the upper incisors. The colour is a dull chocolate- 

 brown; but babies when first born are yellow. 



The dress of the women and elders consists of long capes of 

 untanned, softened leather; but the warriors go naked except for 

 ornaments. Like the Kikuyu, the warriors may wear a flap of skin 

 over one shoulder and across the chest and upper part of the back, 

 probably to protect the lungs. They generally wear skin sandals^ 

 except when in a turf-clad district. When going to war, the 

 warriors wear a head-dress of ostrich feathers arranged like an aureole. They often have flaps 

 of the black-and-white fur of the long-haired Colobus monkey round the shoulders, and 

 narrow stnps of it round the waist and knees. They always have a leather belt, in which are 

 placed their sword and knobkerry. 



The commonest metal ornaments of the Masai are loops of iron chain round the neck, 

 long spirals of wire along the lower arm, or great Catherine-wheel-like coils standing out 

 from the neck. The earrings are short loops of chain or small Catherine-wheel coils of brass 



Photo by Richard Jim-litn. 

 A BARI WOMAN (SIDE VIEW). 



