358 Wanderings in Eastern Africa. 
when consisting, as they often do, of several rows, 
make the wearers hold up their heads like newly 
trained constables fresh from Scotland Yard. Arms 
and legs are decorated with rings and coils of brass 
and iron ; a mixture of grease and red earth besmears 
the entire person, and, as an additional set off, the face 
is often picked out with white. 
Their weapons, which, for aught that they know of 
real warfare and the use they really make of them, 
might be classed with their ornaments, consist of the 
Masai spear and shield, flint muskets, of either English 
or American manufacture, all marked warranted 
a short sword, and the bow and arrow ; but the latter is 
chiefly confined to the older men. The use of the 
musket has been introduced by the Wasuahili, who 
find it readily accepted as the price of a slave, though 
it may only cost them three dollars. 
The dress of the women is made of the skins of 
sheep and goats, but is far more ample and decent 
than that of the men. A small skin, worn as a girdle 
round the waist, reaches to the knees, but another 
and larger one, made by neatly sev/ing many pieces 
together, enwraps the whole body, being brought 
round the shoulders like a shawl, fastened in front, 
and falling, like the long robe of the Arabs, to the 
heels. This is the full dress of the really respectable. 
Many women go about with only the under girdle 
around their loins. In ornaments, as indeed is proper, 
they are more profuse than the men. In the well- 
stretched lobes of their ears they wear large disks of 
brass wire, in concentric coils or well-polished brazen 
wheels, as large as the palm of a good-sized hand — 
a pair of them to each ear. They are not placed 
