A SPORTSMAN AND NATURALIST 8ii'J 



400 members of that famous warrior tribe live in forty little mud 

 huts. The huts are built in a circle round a kraal into which the 

 cattle are brought at night. There are entrances from without at 

 ever}^ ten or twelve huts, the rest presenting to the outside world a 

 solid wall of mud and tree branch. The huts are eight feet long 

 by five or six feet in breadth, and some four or five feet in height, 

 and in these ten men, women and children will sleep quite happily, 

 piled one upon another. 



The Masai are very like American Indians, scorning all kinds 

 of work and requiring their wives to do it all. You vvill see long 

 processions of them, the men bearing spears and shields and the 

 women struggling after with the burdens of v.ood or blankets or 

 whatever may be needed on the trek. About the only thing which 

 a Masai will deign to carry for a white man is his gun, and this is a 

 source of joy for him. 



THE V/OMEN ARE THE BURDEN -BEARERS. 



As for the women, they condemn themselves to burden-bearing 

 all their lives. As soon as they are full grown steel and copper 

 bands are placed around their legs from ankle to knee, and again 

 around the arms from wrist to elbow and sometimes from elbow to 

 shoulder also, forming solid coils of steel and copper, each section 

 of which weighs seven or eight pounds. Their arms grow puffy 

 and distorted over the edges, and their legs are so heavy that the 

 women acquire in youth a shambling gait which they can never 

 correct, although later in life they remove the leg ornaments and 

 keep only those on the arms. 



When the Vv'oman reaches maturity she adds a huge spring-like 

 collar of steel to her equipment, the diameter being a foot or more. 

 Under this are other steel or copper collars, and in her ears are 

 string after string of beads. Taken all in all, her steel and bead 

 ornaments average a weight of some 50 or 60 pounds. This metal 

 tubing almost suffices to clothe them, but they wear also a leather 

 apron, stitched on v. ith fiber, which they can never remove, and in 

 which they live and sleep from youth to old age. 



A short time ago Lenana, the King of the Masai, came with 



