LAKE JIFE AND THE LOAD TO GONJA. 
303 
sitting gnawing half-cooked beef round smouldering 
fires. As we emerged from the bush and our boots 
clattered on the stones, they looked up, but without 
exhibiting any surprise or even offering to move. I 
called out in lusty amiability, “ Subai ?” (their form of 
greeting, to which the proper answer is “ Iba ! ”), but 
no reply came. The nearest among them motioned 
us back in a not discourteous manner, and intimated 
they would come and talk to us anon. We marched 
into a small enclosure of thorns and stones, overlooking 
the stony hollow wherein the Masai were seated, and 
putting down the burthens, got ready our twenty-eight 
guns for a desperate fight if necessary. Then the 
Masai came, perhaps forty at once, with a leader. The 
leader called out to us imperiously, “ Tdtona ! ” (“ Sit 
down ! ”), which we did. Then they conferred among 
themselves. Some said, “ Endara Elajomba! ” 
( u Fight the coast people ”). Others said, “No, wait 
first.” Then they again withdrew, and afterwards the 
captain and a few elder men returned bearing branches 
in their hands (a sign of peace). They called on two 
or three of our men to advance and confer with them, 
so Kiongwe, Ibrahim, and Bakari went. After ask¬ 
ing various questions as to who I was, where I came 
from, and whither I was going, the Masai leader in¬ 
quired “ Had we any sickness ? ” This query aroused 
a happy, but sadly unveracious, thought in my mind. 
“ Tell him,” I said to Kiongwe, in Swahili, a language 
the Masai did not understand, “ Tell him we have 
small-pox.” Kiongwe grasped the idea, and said to 
the Masai captain, with well-feigned vexation, “Yes; 
we have got a man suffering from the white disease” 
(the Masai name for small-pox). “ Show him,” the 
leader replied, at the same time moving several yards 
