ANTHROPOLOGY. 
425 
ture they naturally regard with kindness. From the 
honey, mixed with water, they make an intoxicating 
mead called “ ol-marua.” This and sour milk are their 
chief beverages. Milk is regarded as a sacred fluid. 
They will never give or sell it to strangers of other 
nations, and were it not that the women are less rigid 
in their views than the men, and that they may occa- 
sionallv be bribed with beads to bring 1 milk clandes- 
*/ O 
tinely to the strangers, this grateful fluid would other¬ 
wise be unprocurable in Masai-land. Moreover, 
although they will readily give or sell castrated 
bullocks, they will never willingly part with a cow. 
The most heinous act a stranger can commit in their 
land is to boil milk. This, they think, will so enrage 
the cows that they will at once run dry. Any one caught 
doing so can only atone for the sin with a fearfully 
heavy fine, or, failing that, the insult to the holy 
cattle will be wiped out in his blood. Talking of blood, 
this is one of the Masai warrior’s chief and favourite 
forms of nutriment. The ox is generally stunned with 
a blow on the back of the head, and then a vein is 
opened in the throat. To this the Masai applies his 
lips, and sucks and sucks until he can hold no more or 
until his impatient comrades tear him from the spurt¬ 
ing vein. Doubtless the salts in the warm blood 
supply a need in his diet, for in no other form does salt 
mix with his food, the warriors being compelled to 
refrain from the salted tobacco their elders so enjoy. 
Commerce and the cattle disease will do much to 
open up Masai-land, which is the finest country in 
Africa. The one will soften and the other will tame 
these fierce people. The increasing love of trade goods 
impels them to encourage the arrival of coast caravans, 
and the loss of their cattle, as before explained, will 
