538 
THE KILIMA-NJAEO EXPEDITION. 
lesser way, tlie scourge of Eastern Equatorial Africa. 
They have made previously well-populated, prosperous 
districts abandoned wildernesses, driving away all the 
cattle, killing such of the inhabitants as resisted, and 
leaving the remainder to die of starvation. But of 
late years they no longer play the same havoc. Be¬ 
tween the coast and Kilima-njaro they are rarely to 
be met with, and in such cases as when they are en¬ 
countered away from their homes, the white traveller 
will not find them very hard to deal with. Commerce 
is slowly but surely humanizing the Masai. They 
most of them prefer trading to fighting now. Yearly 
they are visited by many native caravans from the 
coast, who go to buy ivory with iron, wire, cloth, and 
beads. Certain tribes of the Masai, generally known 
as Wa-kwavi by the coast people, have abandoned 
entirely this roving robber life, and now occupy large 
districts as quiet, thrifty agriculturists. The Masai 
are all of them great cattle-keepers, and possess not 
only innumerable herds of splendid kine, but also 
keep numbers of donkeys as beasts of burden. These 
asses are very fine animals, resembling exactly the 
Ethiopean wild ass, from which stock they are cer¬ 
tainly derived. The Masai are a people who in time 
will become amenable to civilization, I am sure, and 
commerce will temper their wild ways. They are 
very different from the mad fanatics we have been 
fighting in the Soudan, and if all Europeans behave 
as well to them as Mr. Joseph Thomson has done, we 
should soon be welcomed as traders and settlers in 
their midst. 
It may be roughly said, then, that between the 
coast and the Victoria Nyanza, the plains or plateaux 
are inhabited by the Masai and their helot races* and 
