NEW AFRICA. 



85 



"Nakuru. Once as much hunters of men as of lions and other wild beasts, they 

 were for years the terror of all the native tribes of northeast Africa between 

 Lake Victoria Nyanza and the Red Sea, excepting perhaps the powerful 

 Wakamba already mentioned. They were loosely confined within these west- 

 ern and eastern bounds by the Uganda confederation of tribes and by the 

 Somali warriors. Years ago they were almost a nomadic race, like the Sioux 

 of North America or the Huns of the old world, sweeping the country with 

 their wild forays of rapine and destruction. They took their cattle with them, 



Copyright 1909, by Underwood & Underwood. 



MASAI WIVES BUILDING A NEW VILLAGE. 



and it was the wholesale destruction of their herds by plague which caused 

 many of them to establish villages and form a distinct division of the tribe. 

 Then until they abandoned the warpath within recent years, at the "sugges- 

 tion" of the British authorities, the Masai were generally divided into war- 

 riors — splendid specimens of chocolate colored young manhood, never less 

 than six feet in height — and those who had served their time at feats of arms 

 and had settled down to married and domestic life. The warriors, or free- 



