ABSTRACT
As we have seen in the introduction to the seventeenth chapter, the people of East Africa are essentially a race of nomads. Individuals may be stationary ; settlements may be made and held for generations ; but slowly, irregularly, and unconsciously, the tribes themselves are on the move. The predominant migration is a flow from north to south. The ancestors of the Masai worked their way along the Nile valley,1 and entered what is now British East Africa from the north and northwest. The Somali have spread over the “ Horn of Africa,” and are encroaching from the north-east, parallel to the Indian Ocean shore. This statement of direction, however, is only true in a very general sense. Taken in detail the movement has been spasmodic and erratic, and has travelled in waves rather than in a direct and constant stream. Here, the backwash of a broken wave has enabled a tribe to advance in the direction opposite to that of the main current ; there, an eddy has thrown another at right angles to it. Occasionally
a strong position has enabled a tribe to hold its own, as on a rock, while the flood has swept by it and isolated it from its fellows. Thus the Wa-kamba have been carried northward from their old home in the Ugara country, and drawn into their present position in the British protectorate ; while the Doko of Laikipia and the Wa-ruguru of Kenya have been left in their forest homes, surrounded by alien races.
