810 
GAME AND DISEASE 
the rinderpest struck the country — buffalo and eland died, 
but not in large numbers. 
The Masai have a legend that ol ki piri (pleuro) was intro- 
duced by a bull which arose from the waters of Naivasha or 
Elmenteita, and proceeded to cover the female stock in a herd 
of cattle grazing near by. The Moru who was in charge of 
the herd speared the bull, but to his surprise no blood came, 
but a fluid like the discharge from an unhealthy wound. The 
animal, however, died from the wound, but the herd developed 
ol ki piri, and from them it spread all over the Masai country. 
Other stories say it came from the west, and that the El 
Burgu first suffered from it. 
Rinderpest 
This is the worst disease that has ever struck Africa. It 
swept from Abyssinia to South Africa in about six years, 
killing practically all the cattle and decimating the game. 
So far as I have been able to make out from the sources of 
information available, the following appears to be the history 
of this dreaded disease : Somewhere in the eighties, the cattle- 
plague, as it was then called, reached both Abyssinia and 
Egypt — the former from India, the latter from the Black Sea. 
For some years there does not seem to have been any notice- 
able spread of the disease, but in 1891 it appeared in British 
East Africa. I have been making most careful inquiries, 
and the general view amongst the Masai is that the first out- 
breaks in Masailand were amongst the Loi-tok-i-tok, on the 
slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Here it had been brought by 
Masai raiders, who visited the coast about the end of 1890, 
and brought back a quantity of looted cattle. These cattle 
developed the dread pest, and in a short time the Loi-tok-i-tok 
had no cattle left. They, being without stock, came to the 
Malabalo, who lived on the Athi, and with them made a joint 
raid upon the Wakamba, to find that the Wakamba cattle 
were dying. However, they brought some looted stock 
back with them, only to start disease amongst their own 
cattle, which so far had been clean. An old Mkamba told 
me they contracted it from cattle brought from near Basso, 
or Lake Rudolph : this is a more probable story. At the 
