The agricultural as well as the military instructors made themselves useful in other ways, by imparting to their pupils all kinds of skill and knowledge. There were no specially learned men among them, but they opened up a new world to the Masai, exercised a refining and ennobling influence upon their habits and morals, and in a surprisingly short time made tolerably civilised men of them. The Masai, on their part, enjoyed their new lives very much. They were well aware that their altered condition made them the object of all their neighbours' envy, whilst they were still more highly respected than before. And, what was the main thing--at the beginning at least--they enjoyed their new wealth and their increased honour without finding their labour at all painful to those needs. For in this fortunate country it required very little labour expended in a rational way to get from the fruitful soil the little that was there looked upon as extraordinary wealth. He who twice a year spent a few weeks in sowing and harvesting could for the rest of the year indulge in the still favourite luxury of _dolce far niente_. In later years, when the needs of the Masai had been largely multiplied by their growing culture, more labour was required to satisfy those needs; but in the meantime our pupils had got rid of their former laziness; and it may be confidently asserted that not one of them ever regretted that we had imposed our civilisation upon his nation. On the contrary, the example of the Masai stimulated the neighbouring peoples; and, in the course of the following years, the most diverse tribes voluntarily came to us with the request that we would do with them as we had done with the Masai. The suppression of property in the soil among those negro races who--unlike the Masai and most of the other peoples of Equatorial Africa--possessed such an institution in a developed form, in no case presented any great difficulty: the land was voluntarily either given up or redefined. Nowhere was property in land able to assert itself along with labour organised according to our principles. CHAPTER XI