THE MASAIS WERE AMUSED AT THE WAY I HELD ONE OF THEIR 

 DANGEROUS SPEARS 



XXXII 



A Race of Warlike Shepherds : the Masai 



s 



() long ago as 1896 I found in conversation with my 

 friend Merker, now captain in the imperial colonial 

 police, that he and I were agreed in holding that the 

 Masai, generally regarded until then as belonging to the 

 race of Ham, were quite curiously and unmistakably 

 Semitic in their physiognomy. 



Since then my friend has published an imposing work, 1 

 the outcome of many years of study, in which he has 

 expounded his view that the Masai, long before the period 

 of the oldest records we have of Egypt, had come from 

 Arabia to Africa, there eventually to settle clown upon the 

 eastern velt. He has sought to demonstrate, moreover, 

 that the Masai adherents to a strictly monotheistical 

 religion were the descendants of that oldest branch of 

 the Semitic family which was in possession of the Biblical 



1 The Masai : an Ethnographical Study of an East African Semitic 

 Jtace. Berlin 1904. Dietrich Riemer. 



716 



