WILD MAN 



AND WILD BEAST IN AFRICA 



11 



The purely negro tribes, 

 the tribes of pronounced 

 negro type, throughout 

 East Africa, were for 

 the most part agricul- 

 turalists. Whenever we 

 came upon a region 

 where the people lived 

 in beehive huts and tilled 

 the ground, we were cer- 

 tain to find a nearly pure 

 negro type ; but there 

 has been all through 

 that country for ages an 

 infiltration of northern 

 races. I cannot speak of 

 these races with ethnic 

 exactness, because n o 

 one can ; and the linguis- 

 tic and racial types often 

 fail to correspond. But 

 you will understand 

 what I mean when I say 

 that they are of dark 

 Arab type, being either 

 black or a very dark 

 brown or yellow, but of 

 the northern type of 

 features. These races 

 have come down from 

 the north and have 

 mixed with the negro 

 type — with 

 aboriginals, 

 mixed race 

 some curious points of 

 unlikeness to the sur- 

 rounding natives. Wher- 

 ever you meet a pastoral 

 tribe you will find men 

 many of whom show 

 traces of this northern 

 origin — many of whom have clear-cut, 

 aquiline features ; and those men you 

 never find living in beehive huts. They 

 live in queer square huts placed in a ring, 

 making what we would call in the West 

 a big corral — a big ring fence in which 

 their cattle are kept. The pastoral tribes 

 which we met north of the Guaso Nyero 

 had camels, and north of these are tribes 

 which own horses. But the Nandi, Ma- 

 sai, and other tribes south of them have 



the negro 

 But the 

 has kept 



Photo by J. Alden L,oring. Copyright by Charles Scribner's Sons 

 MASAI WITH A STRETCHING STONE IN HIS EAR 



neither camels nor horses ; they own 

 large herds of cattle, with donkeys, 

 goats, and hairy sheep. They do not till 

 the soil ; they live exclusively on meat, 

 blood, and milk. I hate to shock the 

 vegetarians, but I am bound to say that 

 those people, who never eat anything but 

 meat, blood, and milk, are as hearty and 

 strong a set of people as I have ever seen 

 in my life. Many of the Masai and 

 Nandi are particularly fine looking. 



