Part 6

The Spell of the Elelescho

On the afternoon of January 14, 1897, a small caravan of native bearers, some fifty strong, was wearily making its way across the wide plain towards its long-wished-for goal, Lake Nakuro, which was at last coming, into sight in the far distance. The appearance of the bearers and their worn-out clothing showed plainly that the caravan had made a long journey. And so it was. Weakened by fever, I was coming from the Victoria Nyanza in the hope of making a quicker recovery in this more elevated district. As is the way when one is convalescent, life seemed to me something doubly beautiful and desirable now that, after lying seriously ill for weeks, I was recovering from the fever. I had been all but despaired of by the English officers who had kindly taken care of me, Mr. C. W. Hobley and Mr. Tompkins, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. I had caught the disease in the marshes of the Nyanza and in my tramp through the wild Sotik and Nandi country, then unexplored or very little known. During the last few days our march had once more been imperilled by hostile tribes, the rebel Wakamassia, but this danger was all but past now that we were entering the uninhabited region of the Nakuro, Elmenteita and Naiwasha Lakes, in the district known to the Masai as En’aiposha.

Endless undulating, expanses of grassy country, unadorned by a single tree, had made our last days of marching not too pleasant. Now there was a marked downward incline of the grass-covered plateau; it gradually changed to a barren plain of volcanic origin, and the view extended over the wide glittering lake.

Filling a far-stretching hollow, and lost to view on the horizon, it lay at our feet, a welcome sight.

The camp was pitched beside a parched-looking ’msuaki tree on the banks of a brook which at this time of the year was a turbid torrent pouring itself down towards the lake. Some time before, bush and grass fires had raged in the neighbourhood and destroyed the old grass, and here, it would seem, a heavy rainfall had conjured forth for us a new carpet of grass that was fresh and luxuriant. The remarkable luxuriance of the grass lands in the district had already been specially noticed, and compared to the richest pastures of the Swiss Alps, by the discoverer of, and first traveller in, this region, Dr. G. A. Fischer, an explorer who, alas! so soon fell a victim to the climate.

Fischer--in 1883--was the first to visit the neighbouring Lake Naiwasha. How the situation has changed since then! At that time, and thus only twelve years before I first camped there, the warlike Masai still held these wide uplands as absolute masters.

Oscar Baumann, an explorer who did good service, was one of the first to traverse their inhospitable dominions. It was some years after Fischer’s journey that Baumann made his way into the region of the Nile sources, during his famous expedition to legend-haunted Ruanda (now better known to us through Dr. Richard Kandt’s researches). I made his acquaintance at the Austrian Consulate at Zanzibar. He, also, was snatched away in his early years by the Sphinx of Africa, the treacherous climate.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

MASAI ol’ morani AND TWO YOUNGER MASAI IN MY CAMP. THE TYPICAL COSTUME OF THE WARRIOR DIFFERS CONSIDERABLY FROM THAT SHOWN IN THE ILLUSTRATION AT THE END OF THE CHAPTER, WHICH REPRESENTS A MASAI ALREADY INFLUENCED BY CIVILISATION.]

His journey, only a few years before my stay here, cost his numerous and strongly armed caravan hard fighting with the natives. And now I am camping here with a few men in an unfortified camp!

Fischer was quite convinced that he could not venture upon his exploring journey without the support of the Mohammedan trading caravans, but he had finally to start alone with 230 bearers. Yet, notwithstanding all difficulties, he successfully accomplished his task. But how different from those of to-day were the circumstances under which a journey was made into unknown Masailand at that time! The Masai warrior was then still sovereign master in his own land; he was still “Ol open l en gob” (“Lord of the land”) in the full sense of the word. And all the chivalrous poetry that has been so pathetically brought home to us by the fate of the North American Indians, was also not alien to his warlike character. Then came the moment when he had to face the firearms of the Europeans. His fate was sealed, like that of the lion and the leopard.

Then, too, tribute had to be arranged for on all sides. Not only some of the petty chiefs in the neighbourhood of the coast, but the Masai too, must receive costly payments. Thus, for example, Dr. Fischer had to hand over to the chief Sedenga at ‘Mkaramo on the Pagani River, to obtain permission for the passage of his caravan, 100 pieces of cloth, each six yards long, an axe, 100 leaden bullets, one ten-pound keg of gunpowder, two large coils of brass wire, and eight pounds’ weight of artificial pearls!

Only two kinds of caravans were known to the Masai, slave caravans and trading caravans, which busied themselves with collecting the coveted ivory tusks. The Arab traders knew how to combine the two objects: the slaves, the “black ivory” of the trade, were forced to carry the white ivory down to the coast.

The strength of these trading caravans, well equipped with firearms, always amounted to several hundred men; but under certain circumstances these numbers were considerably increased, so that caravans of a thousand men or even more were not rare. It took Fischer long months to recruit his caravan. The bearers did not like to undertake the dangerous journey with the first white man who started for that region. The jealousy of the Arab traders was also at work. They feared that the channels of the ivory traffic, which they carefully kept secret, might be revealed.

The German explorer carried through his expedition under the greatest difficulties. He returned home only to succumb soon after to the extraordinary hardships he had endured.

Fischer’s researches were of special importance in connection with the ornithology of Masailand. His journey gave to science some thirty-six hitherto unknown species of birds. Such a result must indeed command our respect, when we consider the difficulties with which the traveller had to contend, and especially when we remember that his available resources were comparatively trifling, beside, for instance, the abundant help that was at the disposal of the English explorers of the same period. The Geographical Society of Hamburg rendered him the service of making the execution of his plans possible, and for the same object Fischer expended all the money he had earned in the active practice of his profession as a doctor on the island of Zanzibar. He saw the activity he had devoted to the service of scientific ideals richly rewarded by the results he obtained. And then he had soon to succumb to the treacherous climate. But if his life was cut short, how quickly the power of the Masai warriors was broken, the very power that had so harassed him, and made his journey so difficult and dangerous. That terrible scourge, the cattle plague, probably introduced from India, suddenly destroyed the greater part of the herds of the Masai, and at the same time blotted out vast numbers of the Masai themselves from the list of the living.

C. G. Schillings, phot.

A memento mori OF THE AFRICAN VELT.]

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The fates of these pastoral people and of their property (the countless herds of cattle) were so closely bound together, and these warlike herdsmen had become so dependent on their droves of cattle, that once these were ruined they could not survive, but died in a few days of famine.

In the lapse of little more than a year the cattle plague and the Black Death had swept over the Masai uplands. Hungry vultures hovered over scenes of horror. The herds of cattle fell under the strange pestilence. Agonised by slow starvation, the herdsmen followed them to death. I have often found lying together, in one narrow space, the countless white bleached bones of the cattle and the skull of their former owner. It would be an old camping-ground, with its fence of thorns (zereba) long rotted away, and it was now a strangely impressive Golgotha. These heaps of bones, still to be seen in 1897, were soon after dissolved in dust and scattered by the winds.

Where are the Masai of those days?

Suddenly they stand boldly before me, as if they had sprung up out of the ground! It is no illusion. But why do my bearers show no fear? Why does no uproar break out in the camp?

C. G. Schillings, phot.

MASAI HERDSMEN.]

It is plain enough that no one troubles himself about the appearance of these figures, for they come, not threatening and demanding tribute, but conscious of the overpowering might of the European. True, a few months ago, not so far from my camp, their warriors surprised and destroyed a caravan of nearly a thousand coast folk. But, generally speaking, they do not care to have to reckon with the superior weapons of Europe. They even accept some food from me. And in this matter they are not so dainty as they used to be in former times, when the warriors--obedient to strict dietary laws--lived only on the meat and milk of their herds. Of course, here we have to deal with only a small number of them. Yonder, on the wild uplands, there still live a not inconsiderable number of Masai, who having saved their herds, or got them together again, keep as far away as may be from the Europeans and their uncanny weapons.

The Masai warriors, with their wives, children, and herds, seem to me to be fit accessories for this desert landscape. In the evening, dances amuse us till late in the night, and many a wordy skirmish breaks out as some of my bearers who, thanks to former journeys, have some knowledge of the Masai tongue, gossip with these nomads of the wilderness. The coast folk think themselves high as the heavens above the “savage” Masai. The Masai warriors, in return, despise the burden-bearing coast folk, count them as “barbarians,” and scornfully call them “il’meek.”

But the times have changed, and so it comes to pass that my people too join in the dance, which lasts late into the night: that songs of the warriors and the women--“‘Singolioitin loo-‘l-muran” and “Loo-‘ngoroyok”--ring out through the darkness, the chorus finding a manifold echo with its oft-repeated “Ho! He! Ho! Na! He! Hoo!” It is a “Leather Stocking” kind of poetry, and indeed the redskins of the New World and the Masai here in Dark Africa seem to me alike. The former had to yield to civilisation, the same fate awaits the latter.