the words "As I die and am not born again." When he confessed his mistake to his employer, the moon hurled a stick at the hare and slit his lips. The faithless messenger took flight, and still ranges timidly over the face of the earth.27

The temptation is great to explain the coincidence of decisive physical characters, strange customs, and even a peculiar legend by supposing either that the Koi-Koin and the Papuan Fijians were derived from a common ancestry in primordial times, or at least that they lived so near together as to exchange customs and legends. But neither hypothesis is tenable. On closer examination, the Koi-Koin are sufficiently distinguished by the colour of the skin, the absence of hair on the body, and by the lowness of the skull. Among these people the amputation of the fingerjoints is affected during youth, and seems to be superstitiously regarded as a sort of charm. 28 It occurs, moreover, among the Polynesians and in the Nicobars. 29 Thus there remains only' the similar connection of the moon with the hope of immortality. But this merely corroborates the old maxim that among different varieties, in different regions, and at different times, the same objects have given rise to the same idea. Hence the psychical identity of human nature ought no longer to be disputed.

VI. THE NEGROES.1

THE Negroes inhabit Africa from the southern margin of the Sahara as far as the territory of the Hottentots and Bushmen, and

27 Another version of the myth of immortality exists among the Bantu negroes. Casalis, Les Bassoutos, p. 255. Paris, 1859.

28 The same custom is noticed among the Kaffirs by Maclean (Kafir Laws and Customs). The Bushmen are also said to sacrifice the end joints of their fingers on occasions of illness, beginning with the little finger of the left hand, believing that the illness will be removed with the flowing blood. Barrow, Travels, vol. i. p. 289.

29 Tylor, Primitive Culture, vol. ii. p. 402.

1 With this and the preceding chapter compare Richard Andrée's Chart of the Tribes and Languages of Africa, in Meyer's Conversations-lexicon.

Negro Characters.

463

from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, although the extreme east of their domain has been wrested from them by intrusive Hamites and Semites. Most negroes have high and narrow skulls. According to Welcker2 the average percentage of width begins at 68 and rises to 78. The variations are so great that, among eighteen heads from Equatorial Africa, Barnard Davis found no less than four brachycephals. In the majority dolichocephalism is combined with a prominence of the upper jaw and an oblique position of the teeth, yet there are whole nations which are purely mesognathous. It is to be regretted that in the opinion of certain mistaken ethnologists, the negro was the ideal of everything barbarous and beast-like. They endeavoured to deny him any capability of improvement, and even disputed his position as a man. The negro was said to have an oval skull, a flat forehead, snout-like jaws, swollen lips, a broad flat nose, short crimped hair, falsely called wool, long arms, meagre thighs, calfless legs, highly elongated heels, and flat feet. No single tribe, however, possesses all these deformities.3 The colour of the skin passes through every gradation, from ebony black, as in the Joloffers, to the light tint of the mulattoes, as in the Wakilema, and Barth even describes copper-coloured negroes in Marghi. As to the skull in many tribes, as in the above mentioned Joloffers, the jaws are not prominent, and the lips are not swollen.5 In some tribes the nose is pointed, straight, or hooked; 7 even "Grecian profiles" are spoken of, and travellers say with surprise that they cannot perceive anything of the so-called negro type among the negroes. 8 According to Paul Broca,9 the upper limbs of the negro are com

2 Thesaurus Craniorum, p. 210.

3 The typical negro is a rare variety even among negroes, says Winwood Reade (Savage Africa, p. 516).

• Nord- und Central Afrika, vol. ii. p. 465.

5 Mungo Park, Reisen, p. 14. Berlin, 1799.

Among the Batonga between the Cameron Mountains and the Gaboon.

Winwood Reade, Savage Africa, p. 515.

Among the Quissama Negroes in Angola.

throp. Institute, vol. i. p. 187.

Hamilton, Journal of An

See Hugo Hahn's account of the Ovakuengama and Ovambo. Peter

mann, Mittheilungen, p. 291. 1867.

9 Anthropological Review, vol. vii. London, 1869.

paratively much shorter than the lower, and therefore less ape-like than in Europeans, and, although in the length of the femur the negro may approximate to the proportions of the ape, he differs from them by the shortness of the humerus more than is the case with Europeans. Undoubtedly narrow and more or less high skulls are prevalent among the negroes. But the only persistent character which can be adduced as common to all is greater or less darkness of skin, that is to say, yellow, copper-red, olive, or dark brown, passing into ebony black. The colour is always browner than that of Southern Europe. The hair is generally short, elliptic in section, often split longitudinally, and much crimped. That of the negroes of South Africa, especially of the Kaffirs and Betshuans, is matted into tufts, although not in the same degree as that of the Hottentots. The hair is black, and in old age white, but there are also negroes with red hair, red eyebrows, and eye-lashes, 10 and among the Monbuttoo, on the Uellé, Schweinfurth even discovered negroes with ashy fair hair." Hair on the body and beards exist, though not abundantly; whiskers are rare although not quite unknown. 12

ΙΟ

The negroes form but a single race, for the predominant as well as the constant characters recur in Southern as well as in Central Africa, and it was therefore a mistake to separate the Bantu negroes into a peculiar race. But, according to language, the South Africans can well be separated, as a great family, from the Soudan negroes.

1

I. THE BANTU NEGROES.

To them belong the known parts of South Africa up to the equator; and their district extends even to the 5th latitude of the northern hemisphere. Their languages are recognizable by their peculiar defining prefixes, and they also have a large number

I

10 For instance on the Gaboon. Comp. Walker in the Journal of the Anthropological Society, vol. vi. London, 1868.

" Im Herzen von Afrika, vol. ii. p. 107.

Leipzic, 1874.

12 Gerh. Rohlfs, Reise von Kuka nach Lagos. Petermann's Mittheilungen.

1 See above, p. 121, et seq.

Bantu Negroes.

465

of roots in common.

For the sake of convenience they may be divided into east, west, and inland tribes.2 The eastern tribes are again divisible into the people of Zanzibar, including the Suaheli, the Mozambique nations from the coast to Lake Nyassa, the Betshuans further inland, and, lastly, the so-called Kaffirs. The tribes of the interior are the hordes, as yet little known, of the Ba-yeiye, the Ba-lojazi, the Ba-toka, the Ba-rotse, etc. Still more numerous are the western tribes in the Atlantic districts. They are separable, first, into the Bunda nations, including the Herero 3 (erroneously called Damara), the Ovambo and their kinsmen, the Nano, or Ba-nguela, in Benguela, and the A-ngola in Angola. The second division of the western group is represented by the Congo negroes, consisting of the true Congos and the Mpongwe. Lastly, to a third division belong a number of northwestern languages, such as the Ba-kele in the Di-kele, the Benga on the Gaboon, the Dualla in the Cameron Mountains, and the Isubu, and the language of the totally naked Adiya of Fernando Po, who have but recently made their appearance there. Finally, the remarkable Bafan or Fan negroes must be mentioned, who not long ago migrated from the interior to the coast, and who make remarkable toothed iron missiles, like those of the Sandeh, or Niam-Niam, and some of the Hamite tribes of Nubia.5

II. THE SOUDAN NEGROES.

We shall begin their enumeration at the Niger and, advancing westwards and describing the shape of a horse-shoe, return to the

? Bacmeister in the Ausland, p. 580. 1871.

3 Their language is used for intercourse by many other tribes. Hahn, Petermann's Mittheilungen, p. 290.

1867.

* Like all other islands of the Atlantic, it was found uninhabited by the Portuguese. The Adiya, on the contrary, came from the Gaboon district, from which they were expelled by the Mpongwe. Windwood Reade, Savage Africa, p. 63. The name of Adiya is said to signify merely dwellers in villages. Bastian, San Salvador, p. 317. Bremen, 1859.

Du Chaillu, Explorations and Adventures, 1861. It is possible that the name of Ba-fan was only given to them by their neighbours, but in that case they ought perhaps to be placed in a totally different group.

White Nile. In the lower course of the Niger, the Ibo language is spoken, and from the Benue upwards the Nuffi language, neither of which has hitherto been examined. Westwards follows the Ewhe language, which includes the dialects of Joruba, Dahomey, and that of the Mahi, which appears further inland. Allied to these are the languages of the negroes on the Gold Coast who speak Odshi, as do the Ashantees, the Akim, the Akwapim, the Akwamboo, and the Akra. There are many tribes also on the Ivory and Pepper Coast, among which the Kru are best known, on account of their heroic stature and their skill on the sea. In language they are more nearly allied to the Ashantees and Fantees than to the Mandingo, from whom, however, they have borrowed a large number of words. Mande, which is the language of the Mandingo, includes many dialects. Among them is the language of the Vei,' who possess the art of writing, and also the Soso and Bambara. These latter form the word by additions to the roots, and some of their suffixes are used independently, thus affording a clue to the meaning when employed for purposes of definition. The Mande negroes have spread between the 10th and 15th degrees of latitude, from the coast to the upper part of the Niger. Between the Gambia and the Senegal (which river now, as in ancient times, divides the negroes from the Berbers), live the Joloffers, the finest of the negro races, whose language still stands alone. The small space between the River Gambia and Scherboro is thickly occupied by the various languages of the Sererer, or Sárar, and Fulup family, in which, as among the Bantu negroes, prefixes are used.3

Turning further inland, to the countries belonging to the district of the Niger, the first people encountered are an enigmatical people, which has conquered and penetrated far into the interior. These are the Fulbe (singular Pulo), called Fulah by the Mandingo, Fellani by the Hausaua, Fellata by the Kanuri. The term Fulbe means "the Yellows" or "the Browns," and was meant to express the contrast with black negroes.4 Mungo

1 S. W. Koelle, Outlines of a Grammar of the Vei Language, p. 2. London, 1854.

2 Steinthal, Die Mandenegersprachen, p. 67. Berlin, 1867. Koelle, Polyglotta africana. London, 1854.

4 Ibid.