At the age of thirty, or thereabout, the El-morani becomes an Elder.  He may now drink and smoke, vices that in the Spartan days of his military service were rigorously denied him.  He may also take a wife or wives, according to his means, and keep herds of cattle.  His wives he purchases from their parents, the usual medium of payment being cows or sheep.  The young women who have been living in the El-morani village are considered quite as desirable as the young virgins.  If there are children, these are taken over by the husband.  They are considered rather a recommendation than a detriment, for they prove the girl is fruitful.

Relieved of all responsibility, the ex-warrior now has full leisure to be a gentleman.  He drinks a fermented liquor made from milk; he takes snuff or smokes the rank native tobacco; he conducts interminable diplomatic negotiations; he oversees minutely the forms of ceremonials; he helps to shape the policies of his manyatta, and he gives his attention to the accumulation of cows.

The cow is the one thing that arouses the Masai’s full energies.  He will undertake any journey, any task, any danger, provided the reward therefor is horned cattle.  And a cow is the one thing he will on no account trade, sell, destroy.  A very few of them he milks, and a very few of them he periodically bleeds; but the majority, to the numbers of thousands upon thousands, live uselessly until they die of old age.  They are branded, generally on the flanks or ribs, with strange large brands, and are so constantly handled that they are tamer and more gentle than sheep.  I have seen upwards of a thousand head in sole charge of two old women on foot.  These ancient dames drove the beasts in a long file to water, then turned them quite easily and drove them back again.  Opposite our camp they halted their charges and came to make us a long visit.  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.