246 THROUGH MA SAIL AND TO THE BORDERS OF KIKUYU 



and younger brothers and sisters, eating meat and vegetables, 

 and drinking milk. All is now changed. The moran must 

 live on meat or milk alone, but must not take them together. 

 Other travellers relate that a purgative is taken to remove all 

 traces of milk from the stomach before meat is eaten, but this 

 we did not ourselves verify. Even now a moran must not eat 

 the flesh of a wild animal, and vegetables, honey, beer, &c, are 

 also strictly forbidden. He must not smoke or take snuff, and 

 would sooner eat his own cow-hide sandals than touch any of the 

 prohibited luxuries. On a long journey, however, he is allowed 

 to make one exception in favour of the gum of the acacia, 

 which the Masai chew. The meals of the moran consist of 

 lightly cooked or boiled meat, or of fresh and clotted milk. 

 They look upon cooking milk as a crime, not liking even 

 strangers to do it, so that they are very unwilling to sell milk. 



They add a certain bark to the. liquid in which the meat 

 is cooked, which dyes it red, and this broth they drink. They 

 take their meals in retirement, 1 and can eat an enormous 

 quantity at one time. 



The appearance of the young moran is now as completely 

 changed as his mode of life. He receives from his father a 

 spear with a blade nearly three feet long, a large elliptical 

 shield of buffalo hide with the heraldic device of the district on 

 the outside, in white, red, or black, a long straight sword, and 

 a club made of heavy wood as hard as iron, or of rhinoceros 

 horn. Firearms have not yet been introduced to Masai! and, and 

 it is only rarely that bows and arrows are used instead of spears. 



1 Thomson says, a projpos of the meals of the moran : ' He must not be seen 

 eating meat in the kraal, neither must he take it along with milk ... so many 

 days were devoted entirely to the drinking of new milk, and then, when carnivorous 

 longings came over him, he had to retire with a bullock to a lonely place in the 

 forest, accompanied by some of his comrades, and a ditto to act as cook . . . they 

 killed the bullock . . . then opened a vein and drank the blood fresh from the 

 animal . . . this sanguinary draught concluded, the} 7 proceeded to gorge themselves 

 on the flesh.'- — Through Masailand, pp. 251-252. 



