C. G. Schillings, phot.
BEARERS MAKING THEIR WAY THROUGH HIGH GRASS.
My former companion on my travels, Alfred Kaiser, describes, not without a certain feeling of sadness, how he saw them once more, not long, ago, under these new conditions, already to a great extent changed by European influence—and changed in a way that was not at all to their advantage. Using, instead of the beautiful Masai dialects, some mangled fragments of English, they scornfully refused objects of barter that were eagerly coveted ten years ago, and insisted on coined money. They no longer wore their native ornaments, but were dressed in European second-hand clothes. In a word they were stripped of all the wild and primitive beauty that had once distinguished them.
It is a hard fate, when a rude aboriginal people is all of a sudden brought into touch with those of a high degree of civilisation.
As the former lord of the land[5] was deprived of his rights, so the same fate, more or less, befalls the splendid animal world that lends its charm to these solitudes.
But then—ten years ago! I had been given back to life after sharp suffering, and all that I was now allowed to see in such rich abundance spoke to me in a more than ordinarily impressive language, a language that seemed to me to have an enduring charm.
And how clearly must this language have sounded in the times of the primitive past!
So we may here attempt a picture of the wild life of the lake margin in former days, on the lines of the sketches I have already traced out of the life and activity of the wild herds of the plateau, as I still could see them....
Out of the many memories of those days, that still work on me like magic, there is one above all that has a special meaning, for me: “Elelescho!”