ANTHROPOLOGY. 
421 
shells of certain fruits, or from ivory or rhinoceros 
horn. Their spears, knives, razors, and all metal 
instruments are made by the curious El-konono tribe, 
who dwell among them as vassals and serfs. Some of 
the poor Masai make a subsistence by neatly sowing 
leathern garments and disposing of them to women or 
old men in exchange for food. 
The domestic animals of the Masai are oxen, goats, 
sheep, donkeys, and dogs. Fowls they despise and 
do not keep. Their cattle absorb all their thoughts. 
For their possession and retention wars are waged. 
The gift of an ox is a sign of solemn peacemaking, and 
is generally accompanied by much spitting right and 
left of the men who lead it. Nearly all their rites and 
superstitions are connected with cattle. They believe 
that they are the lawful heritage of the Masai race, 
whose primal ancestor received from Naiterkob the 
power to tame the wild oxen of the woods ; and under 
this impression they cc lift 55 the cattle of all weaker 
nations, maintaining that they have no right to their 
possession. Nevertheless, they probably got their kine 
from their northern home, somewhere on the White 
Nile, for the generic word they use for cow and cattle 
is identical with that of the Bari people round Gondo- 
koro, and related to similar terms in the Siluk and 
Dinka tongues (vide Vocabulary). The only type of 
ox which I have seen in their possession is that humped 
Asiatic breed (the zebu), so common in Tropical Africa, 
and which probably owes its introduction to the 
ancient Egyptians. But I am informed that farther 
in the interior to the eastward of Kilima-njaro, there 
is another breed of cattle in the possession of these 
people—a breed like the oxen of the Cape and South¬ 
west Africa, with large bodies, no hump, and immense 
