But all, both northern Zulus and southern Xosas, are essentially one people in speech, physique, usages and social institutions. The hair is uniformly of a somewhat frizzly texture, the colour of a light or clear brown amongst the Ama-Tembus, but elsewhere very dark, the Swazis being almost "blue-black"; the head decidedly long (72.5) and high (195.8); nose variable, both Negroid and perfectly regular; height above the mean 1.75 m. to 1.8 m. (5 ft. 9 in. to 5 ft. 11 in.); figure shapely and muscular, though Fritsch's measurements show that it is sometimes far from the almost ideal standard of beauty with which some early observers have credited them.

Mentally the Zulu-Xosas stand much higher than the true Negro, as shown especially in their political organisation, which, before the development of Dingiswayo's military system under European influences, was a kind of patriarchal monarchy controlled by a powerful aristocracy. The nation was grouped in tribes connected by the ties of blood and ruled by the hereditary inkose, or feudal chief, who was supreme, with power of life and death, within his own jurisdiction. Against his mandates, however, the nobles could protest in council, and it was in fact their decisions that established precedents and the traditional code of common law. "This common law is well adapted to a people in a rude state of society. It holds everyone accused of crime guilty unless he can prove himself innocent; it makes the head of the family responsible for the conduct of all its branches, the village collectively for all resident in it, and the clan for each of its villages. For the administration of the law there are courts of various grades, from any of which an appeal may be taken to the Supreme Council, presided over by the paramount chief, who is not only the ruler but also the father of the people[257]."

In the interior, between the southern coast ranges and the Zambesi, the Hottentot and Bushman aborigines were in prehistoric ages almost everywhere displaced or reduced to servitude by other Bantu peoples such as the Ma-Kalakas and Ma-Shonas, the Be-Chuanas and the kindred Ba-Sutos. Of these the first arrivals (from the north) appear to have been the Ma-Shonas and Ma-Kalakas, who were being slowly "eaten up" by the Ma-Tabili when the process was arrested by the timely intervention of the English in Rhodesia.

Both nations are industrious tillers of the soil, skilled in metal-work and in mining operations, being probably the direct descendants of the natives, whose great chief Monomotapa, i.e. "Lord of the Mines," as I interpret the word[258], ruled over the Manica and surrounding auriferous districts when the Portuguese first reached Sofala early in the sixteenth century. Apparently for political reasons[259] this Monomotapa was later transformed by them from a monarch to a monarchy, the vast empire of Monomotapaland, which was supposed to comprise pretty well everything south of the Zambesi, but, having no existence, has for the last two hundred years eluded the diligent search of historical geographers.

But some centuries before the arrival of the Portuguese the Ma-Kalakas with the kindred Ba-Nyai, Ba-Senga and others, may well have been at work in the mines of this auriferous region, in the service of the builders of the Zimbabwe ruins explored and described by the late Theodore Bent[260], and by him and many others attributed to some ancient cultured people of South Arabia. This theory of prehistoric Oriental origin was supported by a calculation of the orientation of the Zimbabwe "temple," by reports of inscriptions and emblems suggesting "Phoenician rites," and by the discovery, during excavation, of foreign objects. Later investigation, however, showed that the orientation was based on inexact measurements; no authentic inscriptions were found either at Zimbabwe or elsewhere in connection with the ruins; none of the objects discovered in the course of the excavations could be recognised as more than a few centuries old, while those that were not demonstrably foreign imports were of African type. In 1905 a scientific exploration of the ruins placed these facts beyond dispute. The medieval objects were found in such positions as to be necessarily contemporaneous with the foundation of the buildings, all of which could be attributed to the same period. Finally it was established that the plan and construction of Zimbabwe instead of being unique, as was formerly supposed, only differed from other Rhodesian ruins in dimensions and extent. The explorers felt confident that the buildings were not earlier than the fourteenth or fifteenth century A.D., and that the builders were the Bantu people, remains of whose stone-faced kraals are found at so many places between the Limpopo and the Zambesi. Their conclusions, however, have not met with universal acceptance[261].

With the Be-Chuanas, whose territory extends from the Orange river to Lake Ngami and includes Basutoland with a great part of the Transvaal, we again meet a people at the totemic stage of culture. Here the eponymous heroes of the Zulu-Xosas are replaced by baboons, fishes, elephants, and other animals from which the various tribal groups claim descent. The animal in question is called the siboko of the tribe and is held in especial reverence, members (as a rule) refraining from killing or eating it. Many tribes take their name from their siboko, thus the Ba-Tlapin, "they of the fish," Ba-Kuena, "they of the crocodile." The siboko of the Ba-Rolong, who as a tribe are accomplished smiths, is not an animal, but the metal iron[262].

With a section of the great Be-Chuana family, the Ba-Suto, and the Ba-Rotse is connected one of the most remarkable episodes in the turbulent history of the South African peoples during the nineteenth century. Many years ago an offshoot of the Ba-Rotse migrated to the Middle Zambesi above the Victoria Falls, where they founded a powerful state, the "Barotse (Marotse) Empire," which despite a temporary eclipse still exists as a British protectorate. The eclipse was caused by another migration northwards of a great body of Ma-Kololo, a branch of the Ba-Suto, who under the renowned chief Sebituane reached the Zambesi about 1835 and overthrew the Barotse dynasty, reducing the natives to a state of servitude.

But after the death of Sebituane's successor, Livingstone's Sekeletu, the Ba-Rotse, taking advantage of their oppressors' dynastic rivalries, suddenly revolted, and after exterminating the Ma-Kololo almost to the last man, reconstituted the empire on a stronger footing than ever. It now comprises an area of some 250,000 square miles between the Chobe and the Kafukwe affluents[263], with a population vaguely estimated at over 1,000,000, including the savage Ba-Shukulumbwe tribes of the Kafukwe basin reduced in 1891[264].

Yet, short as was the Ma-Kololo rule (1835-70), it was long enough to impose their language on the vanquished Ba-Rotse[265]. Hence the curious phenomenon now witnessed about the Middle Zambesi, where the Ma-Kololo have disappeared, while their Sesuto speech remains the common medium of intercourse throughout the Barotse empire. How often have analogous shiftings and dislocations taken place in the course of ages in other parts of the world! And in the light of such lessons how cautious ethnographists should be in arguing from speech to race, and drawing conclusions from these or similar surface relations!

Referring to these stirring events, Mackenzie writes: "Thus perished the Makololo from among the number of South African tribes. No one can put his finger on the map of Africa and say, 'Here dwell the Makololo[266].'" This will puzzle many who since the middle of the nineteenth century have repeatedly heard of, and even been in unpleasantly close contact with, Ma-Kololo so called, not indeed in Barotseland, but lower down the Zambesi about its ShirÉ affluent.

The explanation of the seeming contradiction is given by another incident, which is also not without ethnical significance. From Livingstone's Journals we learn that in 1859 he was accompanied to the east coast by a small party of Ma-Kololo and others, sent by his friend Sekeletu in quest of a cure for leprosy, from which the emperor was suffering. These Ma-Kololo, hearing of the Ba-Rotse revolt, wisely stopped on their return journey at the ShirÉ confluence, and through the prestige of their name have here succeeded in founding several so-called "Makololo States," which still exist, and have from time to time given considerable trouble to the administrators of British Central Africa. But how true are Mackenzie's words, if the political be separated from the ethnical relations, may be judged from the fact that of the original founders of these petty ShirÉ states only two were full-blood Ma-Kololo. All the others were, I believe, Ba-Rotse, Ba-Toka, or Ba-Tonga, these akin to the savage Ba-Shukulumbwe.

Thus the Ma-Kololo live on, in their speech above the Victoria Falls, in their name below the Victoria Falls, and it is only from history we know that since about 1870 the whole nation has been completely wiped out everywhere in the Zambesi valley. But even amongst cultured peoples history goes back a very little way, 10,000 years at most anywhere. What changes and shiftings may, therefore, have elsewhere also taken place during prehistoric ages, all knowledge of which is now past recovery[267]!

Few Bantu peoples have lent a readier ear to the teachings of Christian propagandists than the Xosa, Ba-Suto, and Be-Chuana natives. Several stations in the heart of Kafirland—Blythswood, Somerville, Lovedale, and others—have for some time been self-supporting, and prejudice alone would deny that they have worked for good amongst the surrounding Gaika, Galeka, and Fingo tribes. Sogo, a member of the Blythswood community, has produced a translation of the Pilgrim's Progress, described by J. Macdonald as "a marvel of accuracy and lucidity of expression[268]"; numerous village schools are eagerly attended, and much land has been brought under intelligent cultivation.

The French and Swiss Protestant teachers have also achieved great things in Basutoland, where they were welcomed by Moshesh, the founder of the present Basuto nation. The tribal system has yielded to a higher social organisation, and the Ba-Tau, Ba-Puti, and several other tribal groups have been merged in industrious pastoral and agricultural communities professing a somewhat strict form of Protestant Christianity, and entirely forgetful of the former heathen practices associated with witchcraft and ancestry-worship. Moshesh was one of the rare instances among the Kafirs of a leader endowed with intellectual gifts which placed him on a level with Europeans. He governed his people wisely and well for nearly fifty years, and his life-work has left a permanent mark on South African history[269].

In Bechuanaland one great personality dominates the social horizon. Khama, king of the Ba-Mangwato nation, next to the Ba-Rotse the most powerful section of the Be-Chuana, may be described as a true father of his people, a Christian legislator in the better sense of the term, and an enlightened reformer even from the secular point of view.

When these triumphs, analogous to those witnessed amongst the Lacustrians and in other parts of Bantuland, are contrasted with the dull weight of resistance everywhere opposed by the full-blood Negro populations to any progress beyond their present low level of culture, we are the better able to recognise the marked intellectual superiority of the negroid Bantu over the pure black element.

West of Bechuanaland the continuity of the Bantu domain is arrested in the south by the Hottentots, who still hold their ground in Namaqualand, and farther north by the few wandering Bushman groups of the Kalahari desert. Even in Damaraland, which is mainly Bantu territory, there are interminglings of long standing that have given rise to much ethnical confusion. The Ova-Herero, who were here dominant, and the kindred Ova-Mpo of Ovampoland bordering on the Portuguese possessions, are undoubted Bantus of somewhat fine physique, though intellectually not specially distinguished. Owing to the character of the country, a somewhat arid, level steppe between the hills and the coast, they are often collectively called "Cattle Damaras," or "Damaras of the Plains," in contradistinction to the "Hill Damaras" of the coast ranges. To this popular nomenclature is due the prevalent confusion regarding these aborigines. The term "Damara" is of Hottentot origin, and is not recognised by the local tribes, who all call themselves Ova-Herero, that is, "Merry People." But there is a marked difference between the lowlanders and the highlanders, the latter, that is, the "Hill Damaras," having a strong strain of Hottentot blood, and being now of Hottentot speech.

The whole region is a land of transition between the two races, where the struggle for supremacy was scarcely arrested by the temporary intervention of German administrators. Though annexed by Germany in 1884, fighting continued for ten years longer, and, breaking out again in 1903, was not subdued until 1908, after the loss to Germany of 5000 lives and £15,000,000, while 20,000 to 30,000 of the Herero are estimated to have perished. Under the rule of the Union of South Africa this maltreatment of the natives will never occur again. Clearness would be gained by substituting for Hill Damaras the expression Ova-Zorotu, or "Hillmen," as they are called by their neighbours of the plains, who should of course be called Hereros to the absolute exclusion of the expression "Cattle Damaras." These Hereros show a singular dislike for salt; the peculiarity, however, can scarcely be racial, as it is shared in also by their cattle, and may be due to the heavy vapours, perhaps slightly charged with saline particles, which hang so frequently over the coastlands.

No very sharp ethnical line can be drawn between Portuguese West Africa and the contiguous portion of the Belgian Congo south and west of the main stream. In the coastlands between the Cunene and the Congo estuary a few groups, such as the historical Eshi-Kongo[270] and the Kabindas, have developed some marked characteristics under European influences, just as have the cannibal Ma-Nyema of the Upper Congo through association with the Nubian-Arab slave-raiders. But with the exception of the Ba-Shilange, the Ba-Lolo and one or two others, much the same physical and mental traits are everywhere presented by the numerous Bantu populations within the great bend of the Congo.

The people who give their name to this river present some points of special interest. It is commonly supposed that the old "Kongo Empire" was a creation of the Portuguese. But Mbanza, afterwards rechristened "San Salvador," was already the capital of a powerful state when it was first visited by the expedition of 1491, from which time date its relations with Portugal. At first the Catholic missionaries had great success, thousands were at least baptised, and for a moment it seemed as if all the Congo lands were being swept into the fold. There were great rejoicings on the conversion of the Mfumu ("Emperor") himself, on whom were lavished honours and Portuguese titles still borne by his present degenerate descendant, the Portuguese state pensioner, "Dom Pedro V, Catholic King of Kongo and its Dependencies." But Christianity never struck very deep roots, and, except in the vicinity of the Imperial and vassal Courts, heathenish practices of the worst description were continued down to the middle of the nineteenth century. About 1870 fresh efforts were made both by Protestant and Catholic missionaries to re-convert the people, who had little to remind them of their former faith except the ruins of the cathedral of San Salvador, crucifixes, banners, and other religious emblems handed down as heirlooms and regarded as potent fetishes by their owners. A like fate, it may be incidentally mentioned, has overtaken the efforts of the Portuguese missionaries to evangelise the natives of the east coast, where little now survives of their teachings but snatches of unintelligible songs to the Blessed Virgin, such as that still chanted by the Lower Zambesi boatmen and recorded by Mrs Pringle:—

It is probable that at some remote period the ruling race reached the west coast from the north-east, and imposed their Bantu speech on the rude aborigines, by whom it is still spoken over a wide tract of country on both sides of the Lower Congo. It is an extremely pure and somewhat archaic member of the Bantu family, and W. Holman Bentley, our best authority on the subject, is enthusiastic in praise of its "richness, flexibility, exactness, subtlety of idea, and nicety of expression," a language superior to the people themselves, "illiterate folk with an elaborate and regular grammatical system of speech of such subtlety and exactness of idea that its daily use is in itself an education[272]." Kishi-Kongo has the distinction of being the first Bantu tongue ever reduced to written form, the oldest known work in the language being a treatise on Christian Doctrine published in Lisbon in 1624. Since that time the speech of the "Mociconghi," as Pigafetta calls them[273], has undergone but slight phonetic or other change, which is all the more surprising when we consider the rudeness of the present Mushi-Kongos and others by whom it is still spoken with considerable uniformity. Some of these believe themselves sprung from trees, as if they had still reminiscences of the arboreal habits of a pithecoid ancestry.

Amongst the neighbouring Ba-Mba, whose sobas were formerly ex officio Commanders-in-chief of the Empire, still dwells a potent being, who is invisible to everybody, and although mortal never dies, or at least after each dissolution springs again into life from his remains gathered up by the priests. All the young men of the tribe undergo a similar transformation, being thrown into a death-like trance by the magic arts of the medicine-man, and then resuscitated after three days. The power of causing the cataleptic sleep is said really to exist, and these strange rites, unknown elsewhere, are probably to be connected with the resurrection of Christ after three days and of everybody on the last day as preached by the early Portuguese evangelists. A volume might be written on the strange distortions of Christian doctrines amongst savage peoples unable to grasp their true inwardness.

In Angola the Portuguese distinguish between the Pretos, that is, the "civilised," and the Negros, or unreclaimed natives. Yet both terms mean the same thing, as also does Ba-Fiot[274], "Black People," which is applied in an arbitrary way both to the Eshi-Kongos and their near relations, the Kabindas of the Portuguese enclave north of the Lower Congo. These Kabindas, so named from the seaport of that name on the Loango coast, are an extremely intelligent, energetic, and enterprising people, daring seafarers, and active traders. But they complain of the keen rivalry of another dark people, the Judeos Pretos, or "Black Jews," who call themselves Ma-Vambu, and whose hooked nose combined with other peculiarities has earned for them their Portuguese name. The Kabindas say that these "Semitic Negroes" were specially created for the punishment of other unscrupulous dealers by their ruinous competition in trade.

A great part of the vast region within the bend of the Congo is occupied by the Ba-Luba people, whose numerous branches—Ba-Sange and Ba-Songe about the sources of the Sankuru, Ba-Shilange (Tushilange) about the Lulua-Kassai confluence, and many others—extend all the way from the Kwango basin to Manyemaland. Most of these are Bantus of the average type, fairly intelligent, industrious and specially noted for their skill in iron and copper work. Iron ores are widely diffused and the copper comes from the famous mines of the Katanga district, of which King Mzidi and his Wa-Nyamwezi followers were dispossessed by the Congo Free State in 1892[275].

Special attention is claimed by the Ba-Shilange nation, for our knowledge of whom we are indebted chiefly to C. S. Latrobe Bateman[276]. These are the people whom Wissmann had already referred to as "a nation of thinkers with the interrogative 'why' constantly on their lips." Bateman also describes them as "thoroughly honest, brave to foolhardiness, and faithful to each other. They are prejudiced in favour of foreign customs and spontaneously copy the usages of civilisation. They are the only African tribe among whom I have observed anything like a becoming conjugal affection and regard. To say nothing of such recommendations as their emancipation from fetishism, their ancient abandonment of cannibalism, and their national unity under the sway of a really princely prince (Kalemba), I believe them to be the most open to the best influences of civilisation of any African tribe whatsoever[277]." Their territory about the Lulua, affluent of the Kassai, is the so-called Lubuka, or land of "Friendship," the theatre of a remarkable social revolution, carried out independently of all European influences, in fact before the arrival of any whites on the scene. It was initiated by the secret brotherhood of the Bena-Riamba, or "Sons of Hemp," established about 1870, when the nation became divided into two parties over the question throwing the country open to foreign trade. The king having sided with the "Progressives," the "Conservatives" were worsted with much bloodshed, whereupon the barriers of seclusion were swept away. Trading relations being at once established with the outer world, the custom of riamba (bhang) smoking was unfortunately introduced through the Swahili traders from Zanzibar. The practice itself soon became associated with mystic rites, and was followed by a general deterioration of morals throughout Tushilangeland.

North of the Ba-Luba follows the great Ba-Lolo nation, whose domain comprises nearly the whole of the region between the equator and the left bank of the Congo, and whose Kilolo speech is still more widely diffused, being spoken by perhaps 10,000,000 within the horseshoe bend. These "Men of Iron" in the sense of Cromwell's "Ironsides," or "Workers in Iron," as the name has been diversely interpreted (from lolo, iron), may not be all that they have been depicted by the glowing pen of Mrs H. Grattan Guinness[278]; but nobody will deny their claim to be regarded as physically, if not mentally, one of the finest Bantu races. But for the strain of Negro blood betrayed by the tumid under lip, frizzly hair, and wide nostrils, many might pass for average Hamites with high forehead, straight or aquiline nose, bright eye, and intelligent expression. They appear to have migrated about a hundred years ago from the east to their present homes, where they have cleared the land both of its forests and the aborigines, brought extensive tracts under cultivation, and laid out towns in the American chessboard fashion, but with the houses so wide apart that it takes hours to traverse them. They are skilled in many crafts, and understand the division-of-labour principle, "farmers, gardeners, smiths, boatbuilders, weavers, cabinet-makers, armourers, warriors, and speakers being already differentiated amongst them[279]."

From the east or north-east a great stream of migration has also for many years been setting right across the cannibal zone to the west coast between the Ogowai and CamerÚns estuary. Some of these cannibal bands, collectively known as Fans, Pahuins, Mpangwes[280], Oshyebas and by other names, have already swarmed into the GabÚn and Lower Ogowai districts, where they have caused a considerable dislocation of the coast tribes. They are at present the dominant, or at least the most powerful and dreaded, people in West Equatorial Africa, where nothing but the intervention of the French administration has prevented them from sweeping the Mpongwes, Mbengas, Okandas, Ashangos, Ishogos, Ba-Tekes[281], and the other maritime populations into the Atlantic. Even the great Ba-Kalai nation, who are also immigrants, but from the south-east, and who arrived some time before the Fans, have been hard pressed and driven forward by those fierce anthropophagists. They are still numerous, certainly over 100,000, but confined mainly to the left bank of the Ogowai, where their copper and iron workers have given up the hopeless struggle to compete with the imported European wares, and have consequently turned to trade. The Ba-Kalai are now the chief brokers and middlemen throughout the equatorial coastlands, and their pure Bantu language is encroaching on the Mpongwe in the Ogowai basin.

When first heard of by Bowdich in 1819, the PaÄmways, as he calls the Fans, were an inland people presenting such marked Hamitic or Caucasic features that he allied them with the West Sudanese Fulahs. Since then there have been inevitable interminglings, by which the type has no doubt been modified, though still presenting distinct non-Bantu or non-Negro characters. Burton, Winwood Reade, Oscar Lenz and most other observers separate them altogether from the Negro connection, describing them as "well-built, tall and slim, with a light brown complexion, often inclining to yellow, well-developed beard, and very prominent frontal bone standing out in a semicircular protuberance above the superciliary arches. Morally also, they differ greatly from the Negro, being remarkably intelligent, truthful, and of a serious temperament, seldom laughing or indulging in the wild orgies of the blacks[282]."

M. H. Kingsley adds that "the average height in mountain districts is five feet six to five feet eight (1.67 m. to 1.72 m.), the difference in stature between men and women not being great. Their countenances are very bright and expressive, and if once you have been among them, you can never mistake a Fan. The Fan is full of fire, temper, intelligence and go; very teachable, rather difficult to manage, quick to take offence and utterly indifferent to human life." The cannibalism of the Fans, though a prevalent habit, is not, according to Miss Kingsley, due to sacrificial motives. "He does it in his common sense way. He will eat his next door neighbour's relations and sell his own deceased to his next door neighbour in return; but he does not buy slaves and fatten them up for his table as some of the Middle Congo tribes do.... He has no slaves, no prisoners of war, no cemeteries, so you must draw your own conclusions[283]." The Fan language has been grouped by Sir H. H. Johnston among Bantu tongues, but he describes it as so corrupt as to be only just recognisable as Bantu. In linguistic, physical and mental features they thus show a remarkable divergence from the pure Negro, suggesting Hamitic probably Fulah elements.

In the CamerÚn region, which still lies within Bantu territory, Sir H. H. Johnston[284] divides the numerous local tribes into two groups, the aborigines, such as the Ba-Yong, Ba-Long, Ba-Sa, Abo and Wuri; and the later intruders—Ba-Kundu, Ba-Kwiri, Dwala, "Great Batanga" and Ibea—chiefly from the east and south-east. Best known are the Dwalas of the CamerÚn estuary, physically typical Bantus with almost European features, and well-developed calves, a character which would alone suffice to separate them from the true Negro. Nor are these traits due to contact with the white settlers on the coast, because the Dwalas keep quite aloof, and are so proud of their "blue blood," that till lately all half-breeds were "weeded-out," being regarded as monsters who reflected discredit on the tribe[285].

Socially the CamerÚn natives stand at nearly the same low level of culture as the neighbouring full-blood Negroes of the Calabar and Niger delta. Indeed the transition in customs and institutions, as well as in physical appearance, is scarcely perceptible between the peoples dwelling north and south of the Rio del Rey, here the dividing line between the Negro and Bantu lands. The Ba-Kish of the Meme river, almost last of the Bantus, differ little except in speech from the Negro Efiks of Old Calabar, while witchcraft and other gross superstitions were till lately as rife amongst the Ba-Kwiri and Ba-Kundu tribes of the western CamerÚn as anywhere in Negroland. It is not long since one of the Ba-Kwiri, found guilty of having eaten a chicken at a missionary's table, was himself eaten by his fellow clansmen. The law of blood for blood was pitilessly enforced, and charges of witchcraft were so frequent that whole villages were depopulated, or abandoned by their terror-stricken inhabitants. The island of Ambas in the inlet of like name remained thus for a time absolutely deserted, "most of the inhabitants having poisoned each other off with their everlasting ordeals, and the few survivors ending by dreading the very air they breathed[286]."

Having thus completed our survey of the Bantu populations from the central dividing line about the Congo-Chad water-parting round by the east, south, and west coastlands, and so back to the Sudanese zone, we may pause to ask, What routes were followed by the Bantus themselves during the long ages required to spread themselves over an area estimated at nearly six million square miles? I have established, apparently on solid grounds, a fixed point of initial dispersion in the extreme north-east, and allusion has frequently been made to migratory movements, some even now going on, generally from east to west, and, on the east side of the continent, from north to south, with here an important but still quite recent reflux from Zululand back nearly to Victoria Nyanza. If a parallel current be postulated as setting on the Atlantic side in prehistoric times from south to north, from Hereroland to the CamerÚns, or possibly the other way, we shall have nearly all the factors needed to explain the general dispersion of the Bantu peoples over their vast domain.

Support is given to this view by the curious distribution of the two chief Bantu names of the "Supreme Being," to which incidental reference has already been made. As first pointed out I think by Dr Bleek, (M)unkulunkulu with its numerous variants prevails along the eastern seaboard, Nzambi along the western, and both in many parts of the interior; while here and there the two meet, as if to indicate prehistoric interminglings of two great primeval migratory movements. From the subjoined table a clear idea may be had of the general distribution:

Of Munkulunkulu the primitive idea is clear enough from its best preserved form, the Zulu Unkulunkulu, which is a repetitive of the root inkulu, great, old, hence a deification of the great departed, a direct outcome of the ancestry-worship so universal amongst Negro and Bantu peoples[287]. Thus Unkulunkulu becomes the direct progenitor of the Zulu-Xosas: Unkulunkulu ukobu wetu. But the fundamental meaning of Nzambi is unknown. The root does not occur in Kishi-Kongo, and Bentley rightly rejects Kolbe's far-fetched explanation from the Herero, adding that "the knowledge of God is most vague, scarcely more than nominal. There is no worship paid to God[288]."

More probable seems W. H. Tooke's suggestion that Nzambi is "a Nature spirit like Zeus or Indra," and that, while the eastern Bantus are ancestor-worshippers, "the western adherents of Nzambi are more or less Nature-worshippers. In this respect they appear to approach the Negroes of the Gold, Slave, and Oil Coasts[289]." No doubt the cult of the dead prevails also in this region, but here it is combined with naturalistic forms of belief, as on the Gold Coast, where Bobowissi, chief god of all the southern tribes, is the "Blower of Clouds," the "Rain-maker," and on the Slave Coast, where the Dahoman Mawu and the Yoruba Olorun are the Sky or Rain, and the "Owner of the Sky" (the deified Firmament), respectively[290].

It would therefore seem probable that the Munkulunkulu peoples from the north-east gradually spread by the indicated routes over the whole of Bantuland, everywhere imposing their speech, general culture, and ancestor-worship on the pre-Bantu aborigines, except along the Atlantic coastlands and in parts of the interior. Here the primitive Nature-worship, embodied in Nzambi, held and still holds its ground, both meeting on equal terms—as shown in the above table—amongst the Ba-Yanzi, the Ova-Herero, and the Be-Chuanas (Mulungulu generally, but Nyampe in Barotseland), and no doubt in other inland regions. But the absolute supremacy of one on the east, and of the other on the west, side of the continent, seems conclusive as to the general streams of migration, while the amazing uniformity of nomenclature is but another illustration of the almost incredible persistence of Bantu speech amongst these multitudinous illiterate populations for an incalculable period of time[291].

The Vaalpens and the Strandloopers.

Among the ethnological problems of Africa may be reckoned the Vaalpens and the Strandloopers. Along the banks of the Limpopo between the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia there are scattered a few small groups of an extremely primitive people who are generally confounded with the Bushmen, but differ in some important respects from that race. They are the "Earthmen" of some writers, but their real name is Kattea, though called by their neighbours either Ma Sarwa ("Bad People") or Vaalpens ("Grey Paunches") from the khaki colour acquired by their bodies from creeping on all fours into their underground hovels. But the true colour is almost a pitch black, and as they are only about four feet high they are quite distinct both from the tall Bantus and the yellowish Hottentot-Bushmen. For the Zulus they are mere "dogs" or "vultures," and are certainly the most degraded of all the aborigines, being undoubtedly cannibals, eating their own aged and infirm like some of the Amazonian tribes. Their habitations are holes in the ground, rock-shelters, or caves, or lately a few hovels of mud and foliage at the foot of the hills. Of their speech nothing is known except that it is absolutely distinct both from the Bantu and the Bushman. There are no arts or industries of any kind, not even any weapons beyond those procured in exchange for ostrich feathers, skins or ivory. But they can make fire, and are thus able to cook the offal thrown to them by the Boers in return for their help in skinning the captured game. Whether they have any religious ideas it is impossible to say, all intercourse with the surrounding peoples being restricted to barter carried on with gesture language for nobody has ever yet mastered their tongue. A "chief" is spoken of, but he is merely a headman who presides over the little family groups of from thirty to fifty (there are no tribes properly so called), and whose purely domestic functions are acquired, not by heredity, but by personal worth, that is, physical strength. Altogether the Kattea is perhaps the most perfect embodiment of the pure savage still anywhere surviving[292].

When the Hottentots of South Africa were questioned by scientific men a hundred years ago and more regarding their traditions, they were wont to refer to their predecessors on the coast of South Africa as a savage race living on the seashore and subsisting on shellfish and the bodies of stranded whales. From their habits these were styled in Dutch the Strandloopers or "Shore-runners[293]." According to F. C. Shrubsall the Strandlooper of the Cape Colony caves preceded the Bushman in South Africa. They were a race of short but not dwarfish men with a much higher skull capacity than that of the average Bush race. The extreme of cranial capacity in the Strandloopers was a maximum of over 1600 c.c., while the extreme minimum among the Bush people descends as low as 955 c.c. The frontal region of the skull is much better developed than in the Bush race, and in that respect is more like the Negro. There is little or no brow prominence and one at least of the skulls is as orthognathous in facial angle as that of a European. L. Peringuey remarks also that the type was less dolichocephalic than the Bushmen and Hottentots, under 80 in cephalic index. "He was artistically gifted, like the race which occupied and decorated the Altamira ... and other caves of Spain and France. He painted; he possibly carved on rocks; he used bone tools; he made pottery; he perforated stones for either heading clubs or to be used as make-weights for digging tools; his ornaments consisted of sea-shells; and the ostrich egg-shell discs which he made may be said to be a typical product of his industry. And this culture is retained in South Africa by a kindred race, but more dolichocephalic—the Bushmen-Hottentots. Analogous are most of his tools and his expressions of culture to those of Aurignacian man."

The Negrilloes.

The proper domain of the African Negrilloes is the intertropical forest-land, although they appear to be at present confined to somewhat narrow limits, between about six degrees of latitude north and south of the equator, unless the Bushmen be included. But formerly they probably ranged much farther north, and in historic times were certainly known in Egypt some 4000 or 5000 years ago. This is evident from the frequent references to them in the "Book of the Dead" as far back as the 6th Dynasty. Like the dwarfs in medieval times, they were in high request at the courts of the Pharaohs, who sent expeditions to fetch these Danga (Tank) from the "Island of the Double," that is, the fabulous region of Shade Land beyond Punt, where they dwelt. The first of whom there is authentic record was brought from this region, apparently the White Nile, to King Assa (3300 B.C.) by his officer, Baurtet. Some 70 years later Heru-Khuf, another officer, was sent by Pepi II "to bring back a pygmy alive and in good health," from the land of great trees away to the south[294]. That the Danga came from the south we know from a later inscription at Karnak, and that the word meant dwarf is clear from the accompanying determinative of a short person of stunted growth.

It is curious to note in this connection that the limestone statue of the dwarf Nem-hotep, found in his tomb at Sakkara and figured by Ernest Grosse, has a thick elongated head suggesting artificial deformation, unshapely mouth, dull expression, strong full chest, and small deformed feet, on which he seems badly balanced. It will be remembered that Schweinfurth's Akkas from Mangbattuland were also represented as top-heavy, although the best observers, Junker and others, describe those of the Welle and Congo forests as shapely and by no means ill-proportioned.

Kollmann also, who has examined the remains of the Neolithic pygmies from the Schweizersbild Station, Switzerland, "is quite certain that the dwarf-like proportions of the latter have nothing in common with diseased conditions. This, from many points of view, is a highly interesting discovery. It is possible, as NÜesch suggests, that the widely-spread legend as to the former existence of little men, dwarfs and gnomes, who were supposed to haunt caves and retired places in the mountains, may be a reminiscence of these Neolithic pygmies[295]."

This is what may be called the picturesque aspect of the Negrillo question, which it seems almost a pity to spoil by too severe a criticism. But "ethnologic truth" obliges us to say that the identification of the African Negrillo with Kollmann's European dwarfs still lacks scientific proof. Even craniology fails us here, and although the Negrilloes are in great majority round-headed, R. Verneau has shown that there may be exceptions[296], while the theory of the general uniformity of the physical type has broken down at some other points. Thus the Dume, south of Gallaland, discovered by Donaldson Smith[297] in the district where the Doko Negrilloes had long been heard of, and even seen by Antoine d'Abbadie in 1843, were found to average five feet, or more than one foot over the mean of the true Negrillo. D'Abbadie in fact declared that his "Dokos" were not pygmies at all[298], while Donaldson Smith now tells us that "doko" is only a term of contempt applied by the local tribes to their "poor relations." "Their chief characteristics were a black skin, round features, woolly hair, small oval-shaped eyes, rather thick lips, high cheekbones, a broad forehead, and very well formed bodies" (p. 273).

The expression of the eye was canine, "sometimes timid and suspicious-looking, sometimes very amiable and merry, and then again changing suddenly to a look of intense anger." Pygmies, he adds, "inhabited the whole of the country north of Lakes Stephanie and Rudolf long before any of the tribes now to be found in the neighbourhood; but they have been gradually killed off in war, and have lost their characteristics by inter-marriage with people of large stature, so that only this one little remnant, the Dume, remains to prove the existence of a pygmy race. Formerly they lived principally by hunting, and they still kill a great many elephants with their poisoned arrows" (pp. 274-5).

Some of these remarks apply also to the Wandorobbo, another small people who range nearly as far north as the Dume, but are found chiefly farther south all over Masailand, and belong, I have little doubt, to the same connection. They are the henchmen of the Masai, whom they provide with big game in return for divers services.

Those met by W. Astor Chanler were also "armed with bows and arrows, and each carried an elephant-spear, which they called bonati. This spear is six feet in length, thick at either end, and narrowed where grasped by the hand. In one end is bored a hole, into which is fitted an arrow two feet long, as thick as one's thumb, and with a head two inches broad. Their method of killing elephants is to creep cautiously up to the beast, and drive a spear into its loin. A quick twist separates the spear from the arrow, and they make off as fast and silently as possible. In all cases the arrows are poisoned; and if they are well introduced into the animal's body, the elephant does not go far[299]."

From some of the peculiarities of the Achua (Wochua) Negrilloes met by Junker south of the Welle one can understand why these little people were such favourites with the old Egyptian kings. These were "distinguished by sharp powers of observation, amazing talent for mimicry, and a good memory. A striking proof of this was afforded by an Achua whom I had seen and measured four years previously in Rumbek, and now again met at Gambari's. His comic ways and quick nimble movements made this little fellow the clown of our society. He imitated with marvellous fidelity the peculiarities of persons whom he had once seen; for instance, the gestures and facial expressions of Jussuf Pasha esh-Shelahis and of Haj Halil at their devotions, as well as the address and movements of Emin Pasha, 'with the four eyes' (spectacles). His imitation of Hawash Effendi in a towering rage, storming and abusing everybody, was a great success; and now he took me off to the life, rehearsing after four years, down to the minutest details, and with surprising accuracy, my anthropometric performance when measuring his body at Rumbek[300]."

A somewhat similar account is given by Ludwig Wolf of the Ba-Twa pygmies visited by him and Wissmann in the Kassai region. Here are whole villages in the forest-glades inhabited by little people with an average height of about 4 feet 3 inches. They are nomads, occupied exclusively with hunting and the preparation of palm-wine, and are regarded by their Ba-Kubu neighbours as benevolent little people, whose special mission is to provide the surrounding tribes with game and palm-wine in exchange for manioc, maize, and bananas[301].

Despite the above-mentioned deviations, occurring chiefly about the borderlands, considerable uniformity both of physical and mental characters is found to prevail amongst the typical Negrillo groups scattered in small hunting communities all over the Welle, Semliki, Congo, and Ogowai woodlands. Their main characters are thus described. Their skin is of a reddish or yellowish brown in colour, sometimes very dark. Their height varies from 1.37 m. to 1.45 m. (4 ft. 4¼ in. to 4 ft. 9¼ in.[302]). Their hair is very short and woolly, usually of a dark rusty brown colour; the face hair is variable, but the body is usually covered with a light downy hair. The cephalic index is 79. The nose is very broad and exceptionally flattened at the root; the lips are usually thin, and the upper one long; the eyes are protuberant; the face is sometimes prognathic. Steatopygia occurs. They are a markedly intelligent people, innately musical, cunning, revengeful and suspicious in disposition, but they never steal.

They are nomadic hunters and collectors, never resorting to agriculture. They have no domestic animals. Only meat is cooked. They wear no clothing. They use bows and poisoned arrows. Their language is unknown. They live in small communities which centre round a cunning fighter or able hunter. Their dead are buried in the ground. They differ from surrounding Negroes in having no veneration for the departed, no amulets, no magicians or professional priests. They have charms for ensuring luck in hunting, but it is uncertain whether these charms derive their potency from the supreme being, though evidence of belief in a high-god is reported from various pygmy peoples.[303]

The Bushmen and Hottentots.

Towards the south the Negrillo domain was formerly conterminous with that of the Bushmen, of whom traces were discovered by Sir H. H. Johnston[304] as far north as Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and who, it has been conjectured, belong to the same primitive stock. The differences mental and physical now separating the two sections of the family may perhaps be explained by the different environments—hot, moist and densely wooded in the north, and open steppes in the south—but until more is known of the African pygmies their affinities must remain undecided.

The relationship between the Bushmen and the Hottentots is another disputed question. Early authorities regarded the Hottentots as the parent family, and the Bushmen as the offspring, but the researches of Gustav Fritsch, E. T. Hamy, F. Shrubsall[305] and others show that the Hottentots are a cross between the Bushmen—the primitive race—and the Bantu, the Bushman element being seen in the leathery colour, prominent cheek-bones, pointed chin, steatopygia and other special characters.

In prehistoric times the Hottentots ranged over a vast area. Evidence has now been produced of the presence of a belated Hottentot or Hottentot-Bushman group as far north as the Kwa-Kokue district, between Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza. The Wa-Sandawi people here visited by Oskar Neumann are not Bantus, and speak a language radically distinct from that of the neighbouring Bantus, but full of clicks like that of the Bushmen[306]. Two Sandawi skulls examined by Virchow[307] showed distinct Hottentot characters, with a cranial capacity of 1250 and 1265 c.c., projecting upper jaw and orthodolicho head[308]. The geographical prefix Kwa, common in the district (Kwa-Kokue, Kwa-Mtoro, Kwa-Hindi), is pure Hottentot, meaning "people," like the postfix qua (Kwa) of Kora-qua, Nama-qua, etc. in the present Hottentot domain. The transposition of prefixes and postfixes is a common linguistic phenomenon, as seen in the Sumero-Akkadian of Babylonia, in the Neo-Sanskritic tongues of India, and the Latin, Oscan, and other members of the Old Italic group.

Farther south a widely-diffused Hottentot-Bushman geographical terminology attests the former range of this primitive race all over South Africa, as far north as the Zambesi. Lichtenstein had already discovered such traces in the Zulu country[309], and Vater points out that "for some districts the fact has been fully established; mountains and rivers now occupied by the Koossa [Ama-Xosa] preserve in their Hottentot names the certain proof that they at one time formed a permanent possession of this people[310]."

Thanks to the custom of raising heaps of stones or cairns over the graves of renowned chiefs, the migrations of the Hottentots may be followed in various directions to the very heart of South Zambesia. Here the memory of their former presence is perpetuated in the names of such water-courses as Nos-ob, Up, Mol-opo, Hyg-ap, Gar-ib, in which the syllables ob, up, ap, ib and others are variants of the Hottentot word ib, ip, water, river, as in Gar-ib, the "Great River," now better known as the Orange River. The same indications may be traced right across the continent to the Atlantic, where nearly all the coast streams—even in Hereroland, where the language has long been extinct—have the same ending[311].

On the west side the Bushmen are still heard of as far north as the Cunene, and in the interior beyond Lake Ngami nearly to the right bank of the Zambesi. But the Hottentots are now confined mainly to Great and Little Namaqualand. Elsewhere there appear to be no full-blood natives of this race, the Koraquas, Gonaquas, Griquas, etc. being all Hottentot-Boer or Hottentot-Bantu half-castes of Dutch speech. In Cape Colony the tribal organisation ceased to exist in 1810, when the last Hottentot chief was replaced by a European magistrate. Still the Koraquas keep themselves somewhat distinct about the Upper Orange and Vaal Rivers, and the Griquas in Griqualand East, while the Gonaquas, that is, "Borderers," are being gradually merged in the Bantu populations of the Eastern Provinces. There are at present scarcely 180,000 south of the Orange River, and of these the great majority are half-breeds[312].

Despite their extremely low state of culture, or, one might say, the almost total lack of culture, the Bushmen are distinguished by two remarkable qualities, a fine sense of pictorial or graphic art[313], and a rich imagination displayed in a copious oral folklore, much of which, collected by Bleek, is preserved in manuscript form in Sir George Grey's library at Cape Town[314]. The materials here stored for future use, perhaps long after the race itself has vanished for ever, comprise no less than 84 thick volumes of 3600 double-column pages, besides an unfinished Bushman dictionary with 11,000 entries. There are two great sections, (1) Myths, fables, legends and poetry, with tales about the sun and moon, the stars, the Mantis and other animals, legends of peoples who dwelt in the land before the Bushmen, songs, charms, and even prayers; (2) Histories, adventures of men and animals, customs, superstitions, genealogies, and so on.

In the tales and myths the sun, moon, and animals speak either with their own proper clicks, or else use the ordinary clicks in some way peculiar to themselves. Thus Bleek tells us that the tortoise changes clicks in labials, the ichneumon in palatals, the jackal substitutes linguo-palatals for labials, while the moon, hare, and ant-eater use "a most unpronounceable click" of their own. How many there may be altogether, not one of which can be properly uttered by Europeans, nobody seems to know. But grammarians have enumerated nine, indicated each by a graphic sign as under: