its name. Some of the wealthier are worth in cattle, at settler's
prices, close to a hundred thousand dollars. They are men of importance
in their own council huts, but they lack many things dear to the savage
heart simply because they are unwilling to part with a single head of
stock in order to procure them.

In the old days forays and raids tended more or less to keep the stock
down. Since the White Man's Peace the herds are increasing. In the
country between the Mau Escarpment and the Narossara Mountains we found
the feed eaten down to the earth two months before the next rainy
season. In the meantime the few settlers are hard put to it to buy
cattle at any price wherewith to stock their new farms. The situation is
an anomaly which probably cannot continue. Some check will have
eventually to be devised, either limiting the cattle, or compelling an
equitable sale of the surplus. Certainly the present situation
represents a sad economic waste--of the energies of a fine race
destined to rust away, and of the lives of tens of thousands of valuable
beasts brought into existence only to die of old age. If these matchless
herders and cattle breeders could be brought into relation with the
world's markets everybody would be the better.

Besides his sacred cattle the Masai raises also lesser herds of the
hairy sheep of the country. These he used for himself only on the rare
occasions of solitary forced marches away from his herds, or at the
times of ceremony. Their real use is as a trading medium--for more
cattle! Certain white men and Somalis conduct regular trading
expeditions into Masailand, bringing in small herds of cows bought with
trade goods from the other tribes. These they barter with the Masai for
sheep. In Masai estimation a cow is the most valuable thing on earth,
while a sheep is only a medium of exchange. With such notions it is easy