t beyond. To
their surprise the Masai made peace.

"We have watched the war with the Wakamba," they said, in effect, "and
we have seen the Wakamba kill a great many of your men. But more of your
men came in always, and there were no more Wakamba to come in and take
the places of those who were killed. We are not afraid. If we should war
with you, we would undoubtedly kill a great many of you, and you would
undoubtedly kill a great many of us. But there can be no use in that. We
want the ranges for our cattle; you want a road. Let us then agree."

The result is that to-day the Masai look upon themselves as an
unconquered people, and bear themselves--_towards the other
tribes_--accordingly. The shrewd common sense and observation evidenced
above must have convinced them that war now would be hopeless.

This acute intelligence is not at all incompatible with the rather
bigoted and narrow outlook on life inevitable to a people whose ideals
are made up of fancied superiorities over the rest of mankind. Witness,
the feudal aristocracies of the Middle Ages.

With this type the underlying theory of masculine activity is the
military. Some outlet for energy was needed, and in war it was found.
Even the ordinary necessities of primitive agriculture and of the chase
were lacking. The Masai ate neither vegetable, grain, nor wild game. His
whole young manhood, then, could be spent in no better occupation than
the pursuit of warlike glory--and cows.

On this rested the peculiar social structure of the people. In perusing
the following fragmentary account the reader must first of all divest
his mind of what he would, according to white man's standards, consider
moral or immoral. Such things must be viewed from the standpoint of the
people believing in them. The Masai are moral in the sense that they
very rigorously live up to their own customs and creeds. Their women are
strictly chaste in the sense that they conduct no affairs outside those
permitted within the tribe. No doubt, from the Masai point of view, we
are ourselves immoral.

The small boy, as soon as he is big enough to be responsible--and that
is very early in life--is given, in company with others, charge of a
flock of sheep. Thence he graduates to the precious herds of cows. He
wears little or nothing; is armed with a throwing club (a long stick),
or perhaps later a broad-bladed, short-headed spear of a pattern
peculiar to boys and young men. His life is thus over t