410 
THE KILIMA NJARO EXPEDITION . 
pride and rage, or widening and relaxing with good 
humour. Their heads are often singularly round and 
broad for Africans, though at the same time I have 
not failed to see the most dolichocephalic skulls among 
the true Masai. The hair is certainly longer and less 
frizzly than among the true negroes, though at the same 
time this may be only due to the careful and continual 
combing-out it undergoes and its straightening with 
a thick paste of clay and fat. It is, after all, a negro’s 
wool, and is not longer or more abundant, certainly, 
than the regular Papuan crops of hair which the Bantu 
people of the Upper Congo have been found to possess. 
The ears of the Masai are naturally large, and, 
inasmuch as big ears are admired, this may be an 
inherited and perpetuated peculiarity; but, apart from 
what Nature has done for the race, Art steps in and 
effects greater changes still in the individual. When 
quite young the Masai children drill holes through the 
lobes of their ears. Through these small twigs are 
pushed, beginning at the size of lucifer-matches and 
gradually increasing as the aperture is extended until 
a huge wedge of ivory, four or five inches in diameter, 
can be passed easily through the lobe of the ear, which 
is changed to a thin loop of skin drooping to the 
shoulder. Sometimes a kind of wooden stretcher is 
employed, like a cotton»reel with a groove at both 
ends, and this is inserted lengthwise, to extend the 
ear. Usually, when it is considered sufficiently large, 
a row of fine iron chains, made by the skilful Caga 
forgers, will be hung to the distended loop, or there 
may be a circular wooden or ivory ring like Mandara’s, 
which is illustrated on page 107. Married people 
change all these ornaments for discs of copper-wire, 
coiled round and round and looking just like small 
