408 
THE KILIMA-NJABO EXPEDITION. 
toral Masai, and thus Eastern Equatorial Africa -will 
be opened up to safe and profitable trade. At the 
very worst, however, the Masai are neither so dan¬ 
gerous nor so bloodthirsty as the Soudanese Arabs or 
the fanatical Tuaregs of the Sahara. If you are con¬ 
tent to pay their tribute, you need not fight, and if you 
are forced to defend yourself, these people are power¬ 
less in front of a stockade, as they have no guns, and 
never throw their spears, being only accustomed to a 
hand-to-hand fight. We may be thankful that Moham¬ 
medanism has not yet reached them to turn them into 
mad fanatics or faithless cut-throats like their neigh¬ 
bours to the north and east. It is, indeed, a curious 
subject for reflection that this powerful religion, which 
in a short time swept like an epidemic over all Somali¬ 
land and the entire Soudan from Red Sea to Atlantic, 
should have halted on the borders of Masai-land, 
powerless in its appeals. 
The physical appearance of the unregenerate robber 
Masai is splendid. It is a treat to the anthropological 
student to gaze on such magnificent examples of the 
fighting man. It is an example of one side of our 
multiform nature pushed to an exclusive and supreme 
development. The Masai warrior is the result of the 
development of Man into a beautiful Animal. To call 
him God-like, as we do the Greek ideals, would be 
silly and inappropriate—as much so as seeing divinity 
in a well-bred race-horse or an Alderney cow. To 
compare him with the statues of Apollo with which we 
are most of us familiar in foreign galleries or as 
plaster casts in English palaces of entertainment, is 
unfair to the one and the other. If you could find 
Apollo represented with huge-lobed ears, fang-like 
teeth, high cheek-bones, and a woolly crop, not to 
