LANGUAGES OF THE KILIMA-NJAEO EISTEICT. 449 
been compiled with wonderful accuracy under circum¬ 
stances of much difficulty. 
Krapf called his work “A Vocabulary of the Wa- 
kwavi Tongue,” and Erhardt entitled his, more justly, 
6C A Vocabulary of the Masai Language.” Neither 
seemed to be aware that they were studying the same 
form of speech, although practically the only difference 
in their vocabularies comes from the employment of 
diverse modes of orthography. The language they 
illustrated seems to be a tolerably pure form of Masai 
which is spoken in the vicinity of Kilima-njaro. 
I find some discrepancy between my linguistic notes 
and those of Mr. Last, who visited the southern 
Masai, or Wa-kwavi dwelling in Northern Nguru. I 
believe that gentleman has in hand a voluminous MS. 
vocabulary which will, doubtless, exhibit an interest¬ 
ing study of the language; but the sentences and 
words given by him in the Loyal Geographical 
Society’s “ Proceedings ” for September, 1883, seem to 
show that the dialect is either a very corrupt one or 
has been imperfectly understood. Some words are 
evidently borrowed from neighbouring Bantu dialects, 
and the possessive pronouns and persons of the verb 
are sometimes not in accord with the English trans¬ 
lation. 
About Northern Masai we know but very little. 
It was a great disappointment to me that Mr. Joseph 
Thomson, who is the sole European who has yet 
visited those regions where the Masai impinge on other 
races to the north, should have had no opportunities 
of making linguistic notes. He would otherwise have 
been able to throw some light on the affinities and 
origin of the Masai language. He mentions the people 
of Suk who dwell somewhere to the north of Lake 
