It seems necessary, in further elucidation of this subject, to submit a few additional facts and observations in reference to the Berbers, or present inhabitants of Nubia, in order to show their relative position to the ancient occupants of that country. As the celebrated Burckhardt saw them in almost every locality, we shall mainly content ourselves with his graphic delineation. The Berbers, says he, are of a dark red-brown complexion, “which, if the mother is a slave from Abyssinia, becomes a light brown in the children; and if from the Negro countries, extremely dark. Their features are not at all those of the Negro, the face being oval, the nose often perfectly Grecian, and the cheek bones not prominent. The upper lip, however, is somewhat thicker than is considered beautiful among northern nations, though it is still far from the Negro lip. Their hair is bushy and strong, but not woolly.” The same intelligent traveller subsequently speaks of their language, respecting which he was certainly well qualified to judge; he assures us that the people south of Siout are ancient Bedouin tribes, who speak a very pure Arabic; and he makes a nearly similar remark respecting those who inhabit the river banks from Dongola to Senaar, and thence westward to Bornou, although they speak many different dialects.^[103]

It is well known, however, that there are whole tribes in Nubia whose language is not derived from the Arabic; and these may be more nearly allied to the primitive population. “The inhabitants of Dar Dongola,” says Dr. RÜppell, “are divided into two principal classes, namely, the BarÁbra, or descendants of the old Ethiopian natives of the country, and the races of Arabs who have emigrated from the Hedjar. The ancestors of the BarÁbra, who, in the course of centuries have been repeatedly conquered by hostile tribes, must have undergone some intermixture with people of foreign blood; yet an attentive inquiry will enable us to distinguish among them the old national physiognomy which their forefathers have marked upon colossal statues, and the bas-reliefs of temples and sepulchres. A long, oval countenance, a beautifully curved nose, somewhat rounded towards the tip, proportionately thick lips, but not protruding excessively, a retreating chin, scanty beard, lively eyes, strongly frizzled but never woolly hair, a remarkably beautiful figure, generally of middle size, and a bronze colour, are the characteristics of the genuine Dungolawi.”^[104] He adds, that the same traits of physiognomy are generally found among the AbabdÉ, the Bishareen, and partially among the people of Shendy and Abyssinia.

It must be acknowledged, however, that we can hardly expect to find the genuine Egypto-Ethiopian lineaments in any considerable number among the modern Nubians. Placed as the former were, between the Egyptians on the north, the Indo-Arabian nations on the east, and the Negroes on the south and west, and this, too, through the long period of several thousand years, their features must have become sensibly modified, even in the earliest times, by that blending of race which was inseparable from their position; and as the Koldagi and other Negro tribes have, at different times, established themselves in large bodies in Nubia, we need be at no loss, I conceive, in accounting for any traces of Negro lineage in some BarÁbra communities of the present day.

Dr. Prichard considers “the descent of the modern Nubians, or BarÁbra, from the Nouba (a Negro nation) of the hill country of Kordofan, to be as well established as very many facts which are regarded as certain by writers on ethnography.” With every deference to that distinguished ethnographer, we may inquire, what became of the pre-existing inhabitants when the tribes of Kordofan colonized Nubia? Were they destroyed or expelled? History makes no mention of either; and we are justified in the opinion that an amalgamation of races took place, whence some of those diversities of organization observable in the modern Nubians. That this intermixture of races has continued to the present time, the reader will find abundant evidence in other parts of this memoir; yet I cannot here refrain from adding an observation from Cailliaud, who, remarking on the shortness of life among the people of Senaar from disease and dissipation, declares that the number of Negroes which pours into the country, and the fruitfulness of the women, are the resources which serve to repair the vast and continual waste of population.^[105] I may be told that this is proving too much. A sensible writer, and one who has ingeniously and instructively investigated the Nubian question, remarks as follows:—“The Arab tribes near Shendy may still, perhaps, justly boast of the purity of their blood; but, generally speaking, within the limits mentioned above, the slave or Negro population is about a sixth of the whole, and continually amalgamating with it. While nature kindly endeavours to wash out the stain, every caravan from the south or west pours in a new supply of slaves, and restores the blackening element.”^[106]

This author, however, in his desire to ascribe to climate the chief agency in the transformation of the Negro into the Nubian, seems to overlook the fact that while the Negroes flow into the country on the one side, the migratory Arabs invade it on the other, thus furnishing inexhaustible materials for the blending of the two races. I fully acquiesce, as before hinted, in the accuracy of the following opinion, as applied to a large proportion of the modern Nubians; namely, “that they are descended, not from the possessors of Ethiopia in its flourishing period, but from the prÆdial and slave population of the country, increased by colonists, and raised into a nation by peculiar circumstances between the third and sixth centuries of the Christian era.”^[107]