LANGUAGES OF THE KILIMA-NJARO DISTRICT. 481 
the exclusive race of Southern Tropical Africa, swallow¬ 
ing up, obliterating, absorbing the previous inhabitants 
of the land, and carrying their own form of language 
triumphantly from the Upper Nile to Natal, and from 
the River Tana on the east coast to Fernando Po on the 
west. In the spread of the Masai race and language 
we may see, on a much smaller scale, a parallel to this 
extension of the Bantu. It will be remembered that 
I already have pointed out the relations which the 
Masai language bears to the Siluk and other tongues 
spoken in the basin of the White Nile. Some of these 
forms of speech resemble Masai about as much as the 
Non-Bantu prefix-languages resemble Bantu-proper. 
Most of them are spoken over small and confined 
areas. Yet the range of the Masai tongue and its 
various dialects extends almost uninterruptedly from 
3° N. to 5° S. of the Equator, wherever the Masai 
race has spread in its warlike raids. Now we know 
that in many parts of Eastern Equatorial Africa the 
Masai only arrived, as it were, the other day. In 
many districts, too, in the centre of their present 
home the remnant of aboriginal natives still retain the 
oral tradition that several generations ago the Masai 
were unknown in the land. Yet, with the exception 
of a few isolated mountain-ranges where the Bantu¬ 
speaking inhabitants still linger, the Masai language 
is dominant throughout the whole length and breadth 
of the huge country known as Masai-land. Moreover, it 
is probable that had this warlike race not encountered 
natives armed with firearms and dominated by Arabs 
on the south, they would have overrun a considerably 
larger district than the one they at present occupy, and 
their language would have acquired an even greater 
range, and in course of time have lost its uniformity, 
