C. G. Schillings, phot.
A MASAI DANCE—THE PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS THE PLAITED QUEUE WORN BY THE YOUNG WARRIORS (EL MORAN), WHO LEAP AS HIGH IN THE AIR AS THEY CAN. THE YOUNG WOMEN, WHOSE HEADS ARE CLIPPED COMPLETELY BARE, SING AND DANCE ROUND THEM.
Then my informant told me how many of the elephant hunters still living had been carrying on their business already for a long time before any Europeans whatever thought of making a prolonged stay in the country. He told me also much that was interesting about the old trade routes extending far through Africa, and even to the Congo. He had friends and relatives who had already traversed these routes many times, and journeyed from the east coast even to the Congo, long before any European traveller. Many of the people of his caravan were able to tell from memory each day’s journey as far as the Congo, and give exact information about the chiefs who held sway in each district, and the possibility of getting supplies of various kinds of provisions, such as maize, millet, bananas, or other products of the country.
I cannot exactly say how long he had talked with me about elephants and elephant-hunting, about the ivory trade, and many other things. I only know one thing—that after some time his talk became more and more difficult for me to understand, that I strove in vain against an ever-increasing weariness, and that at last I saw neither the Arab nor the caravan—in a word, saw nothing more, felt nothing more.
I fell into a deep sleep in which, in my dreams, I had a lively argument with some Europeans, who would not believe so many elephants, buffaloes, and other wild animals had formerly been here, and who kept on objecting strongly that it was impossible that all this could have been the case so short a time ago.
When I woke up again I found myself in my lounging-chair, a primitive piece of furniture of my own construction. My black servant stood before me, and asked me if I would not rather go to bed.
I rubbed my eyes—it had all been a dream, then; the spell of Elelescho must have inspired me with it. How foolish to yield to this spell! But men will perhaps so yield to it when all this has become “historical” and the Masai and their lives and deeds have, like the Redskins of America, found their Fenimore Cooper.
Then may the spell of the Elelescho exert its rightful power; then may it make famous the slender, sinewy, noble Masai ol-morani as, amidst his fair ones, his “doiye,”[11] he leads the song-accompanied dance as he goes out to war, and reigns the free lord of the wilderness! But to-day he bears on his brow the significant mark of an inexorable fate—that of the last of the Mohicans.
The spell of the Elelescho has departed from Lake Nakuro, once so remote from the world.
The lake is no longer remote.