VII 



TRAVELS IN EASTERN AFRICA 



279 



of hunters, these Wanderobbo lived in a state of chronic 

 starvation ; for occasions when sufficient honey to satisfy 

 an entire village was procured were rare. 



Upon Lolokwi there lived but one settlement of 

 Wanderobbo, composed, all told, of but fifty souls. 

 Of these ten were active enough to hunt ; then there 

 was one old man, and the remainder were women and 

 children. It seems that in this tribe the females greatly 

 outnumber the males. This perhaps is explained by 

 what my old friend told me. He said that women were 

 capable of supporting life without food for many more 

 days than men. 



These Wanderobbo all spoke the Masai language. 

 They had few implements of any sort — four or five 

 rudely shaped clay pots for carrying water and cooking, 

 a few small axes, similar in shape to those I had seen 

 on the Jombeni range, bows, arrows, and knives. I 

 asked the old man why they did not go to the moun- 

 tains, settle down with the people there, and work, and 

 thus be relieved forever from, starvation and famine. 

 He said : No, they were fond of their mode of life ; 

 they knew no other; their fathers had lived the same 

 life before them, and they were unwilling to trust them- 

 selves in the vicinage of any other people. The worst 

 time for them was during the rains ; for then they were 

 unable to use their bows, as the strings frayed and 

 broke. During the rainy season they literally starved ; 

 those of greatest vitality surviving, while the weaker 

 ones died. Their one pleasure is the intoxication pro- 

 duced by honey-wine. 



Lolokwi is one of the southernmost mountains of 

 the General Matthews range, which extends from the 



