90 THE BONDS OF AFRICA 



of Eastern Equatorial Africa, so shy, so wonder- 

 fully active, that they may well be termed the 

 squirrels of mankind. Even to this day, the 

 N'Derobo stand in some ill-defined servile rela- 

 tionship to the Masai. The first lines in the 

 book of Creation, according to these warlike 

 overlords, are not properly understood by Euro- 

 peans, indeed the number of white men who 

 have acquired any true insight into the intricacies 

 of the beautiful language of the Masai — so full 

 of Vs and o's that many of the words are as the 

 sound of laughing waters — is exceedingly few. 

 In their Book of Genesis the actors in the first 

 scene in the great tragedy of creation are a 

 Masai " el moran " (or warrior), a N'Derobo slave 

 and an ox. The ox was let down from heaven 

 by the Deity, but I fear I am unable to puruse 

 the fable further, for I have but little knowledge 

 of it. 



Exodus, too, has its native versions as well as 

 Genesis. The second chapter of the second book 

 of Moses has a rendering in the far northern parts 

 of Rhodesia which, although it represents a 

 considerable distortion of the story in the Old 

 Testament, is unmistakably a parallel. 



Just as the daughter of Pharaoh came down 

 to wash herself at the river and found the ark 

 among the flags with Moses inside it, so did some 

 dusky daughter of a great chief in the dim long 

 ago find a baby in a little boat among the reeds, 

 and the baby, like Moses, grew up to be the 

 deliverer of his race from the oppressors. 



There is a fascination about these fables of the 

 Equator which makes them subjects of ex- 

 traordinary interest. There are many people 

 who suppose that the African native has no 

 sense or appreciation of the romantic, and that 



