34 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



Whether under some single despotic ruler they sprung 

 into notice is uncertain. The probability is that, 

 like the Zulus, their supremacy was sudden and 

 temporary. Certain is the fact that, in the first half 

 of the nineteenth century, and indeed for the next 

 forty years, theirs was a name to conjure with. North, 

 south, east and west, they raided ; to the coast on the 

 east, Lake Victoria on the west, far into German East 

 Africa on the south, and beyond Mt. Kenia on the 

 north. The object of their raids was a lust for fight- 

 ing and a desire for cattle. Women they never took ; 

 neither male nor female might marry outside the tribe. 

 They attacked Mombasa, they sacked Vanga. Early 

 travellers, European or Arab, were confronted and 

 forced to pay tribute (hongo). To what extent they 

 were feared, a perusal of almost any of the works of 

 early shooters or explorers will show. . At the mere 

 mention of the word Masai rifles were loaded, laager 

 was formed, and tribute was to hand ! Possibly to a 

 certain extent this universal respect was founded on 

 "omne ignotum pro magnifico " ; at all events Mr. F. 

 J. Jackson, formerly an ardent shooter and naturalist, 

 now Governor of Uganda, once stood up to them with 

 no ill effects. Again, as far as we know, they were 

 none the better for their periodical encounters with the 

 Nandi. Still, of their prestige there can be no two 

 questions. Their decline began through natural 

 causes and came so quickly that it is a fair presumption 

 that their rise was equally rapid. Somewhere about 

 1890, the Masai were themselves visited by famine and 

 smallpox and their cattle by rinderpest. They suffered 

 enormously, and in the dissensions that inevitably 

 ensued split into two fractions. Their great chief, 

 Mbatian, died, and one portion, remaining in British 



