The
cattle stood in their tracks until the call was over; not one offered
even to stray off the baked earth in search of grasses.
The Masai cattle king knows his property individually. Each beast has
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.
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