100 
EASTERN ETHIOPIA 
VIII 
beast. Drinking blood seems a horrible practice, but 
the poor in England eat a large quantity of blood in the 
form of a sausage known as “ black pudding ” which 
consists of bullocks’ blood, spiced, mixed with fat and 
cooked. Blood is an important ingredient in the haggis 
so famous in Scotland, and in whose honour Burns wrote 
a poem describing it as the 
“Great Chieftain o’ the puddin’ race.” 
Moreover, some thirty years ago the drinking of warm 
bullocks’ blood was advocated as a cure for consumption, 
and patients afflicted with this disease would regularly 
attend slaughter-houses in London and drink the pre¬ 
scribed quantity of this supposed specific. 
As the Masai live on milk, meat, and blood, and hunt 
no game, they are dej^endent on their flocks and herds. 
Zebras, gazelles, and kongoni run unmolested with the 
cattle. Their domestic animals are cattle, sheep, goats, 
donkeys, and dogs. The cattle are humped (zebus) and 
oxen without humps they treat with disdain. The 
settlers have crossed some of the native cattle with un¬ 
humped species and in two generations the hump 
disappears. 
Anatomically the hump of the zebu consists of fat 
interspersed with muscle fibre ; the latter is derived 
from the broad thin stratum of muscle known as the 
panniculus carnosus, immediately beneath the skin. 
This is the muscle which enables oxen and horses to 
twitch their skin, especially when irritated by Hies. 
The hump is excellent to eat, especially when salted. 
The cattle can take care of themselves. It is stated 
that a herd will charge a leopard, or a hysena, and 
leave it a shapeless mass. It is common for a boy 
of five or six years to be left in charge of a herd of 
cattle and manage them without difficulty. It is 
strano:e that cattle allow children to manage them so 
easily. Kipling, in the delightful Jungle Booh, refers to 
this matter in India : the very cattle, he writes, that 
I 
