With Flashlight and Rifle -+ 



traveller. Those days are gone. The merciless rinder- 

 pest nearly struck the buffalo out of the list of the East 

 African animal world. It struck at them just as it struck 

 at the Masai race. 



If the investigations of my friend Captain Merker 

 are well grounded, it is thousands of years since this race 

 of nomads, one of the oldest of all the Hebrew races, 

 made their way over the East African plains, there to 

 roam at large, with their countless herds of cattle. 



With one blow their power was annihilated by the pest 

 that came from Europe, that scourge of the cattle-breeder. 

 I often' found circular collections of bones of cattle. One 

 could see them from ,the far distance on the velt shining 

 white in the sun. Intermingled with them were numerous 

 human skulls. These^were the camping-places of the Masai 

 in the year 1890. 



Over and over again the self-same drama was enacted. 

 The cattle sic'kened and died. Remedies and charms 

 availed nought. In a few days the camp was pest-ridden, 

 and men, women, and children, helpless and without food, 

 died in agony. Only scanty remnants now survive of the 

 once great Masai people. In their days of need their 

 women and children were sent out or sold as agricultural 

 slaves to more prosperous races. 



The buffalo-herds disappeared almost entirely at that 

 time, and in German and British East Africa only a few 

 survive. And as it happened here to the Masai people 

 and the buffalo-herds, so did it happen to the Indians 

 and bison in America. The progress of civilisation is 

 indeed cruel and merciless. Mankind must spread over 



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