1356 



Pis. 839. 



VARIETIES OF MANKIND. 



Fig. 840. 



Cranium of Bushman. (From a specimen in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons.} f 



compared with the parietal, and in the breadth 

 and expansion of the malar bones. 



The ethnological position of the Hottentot 

 race is not altogether clear. There is evidence 

 that it once occupied a more extensive area 

 than it does at present, and that this was 

 much encroached on by the Kaffres, previously 

 to the European colonisation of the Cape. 

 This fact lends weight to a suggestion offered 

 by Dr. Latham, in order to account for the 

 abruptness of the transition between the two 

 races : " Let two divisions of a certain class 

 pass into each other by imperceptible degrees, 

 and let one of the central portions of either 

 class spread itself at the expense of the parts 

 belonging to its circumference ; the effect which 

 follows is, that those portions of the area which 

 represent the phenomena of transition are 

 overlaid or overlapped ; and that, instead of 

 two populations coming into contact by im- 

 perceptible degrees, they meet as separate 

 classes, with as broad a line of demarcation 

 between their respective representatives, at the 

 peripheries of their respective areas, as there 

 was between their central or typical portions. 

 North-western America illustrates this. The 

 more southern Algonkins have overlaid both 

 the Algonkins of their own section which ap- 

 proached the Esquimaux, and the Esquimaux 

 of the opposite section, which approached the 

 Algonkin. Hence the two populations meet 

 as widely-separated and broadly-distinguished 

 varieties of mankind." * So, it may be sur- 

 mised, the bold and warlike Kaffres have over- 

 spread themselves through a region whose 

 aboriginal population exhibited a transition 

 between the Hottentot and Kaffre types. 

 " The language of the Hottentots," says the 

 same learned ethnologist, " can be shown not 

 to be more different from those of the world 

 in general, than they are from each other;" it 

 has not yet, however, been sufficiently studied 

 to enable its true affinities to be known, though 

 some philologists affirm that it is a degraded 

 Kaffre tongue.-f- 



* Varieties of Mankind, p. 498. 



f The author thinks it worth while still to repeat 

 a suggestion which he made some years since ; 

 namely, that the Hottentot race is the remnant of 

 an earlier migration from High Asia, than that 

 which was the stock of the great bulk of African 

 nations ; and that it has been driven down into the 

 remotest corner of the continent, just as the aboriginal 

 Turanian population of south -western Europe seems 



Passing now to the valley of the Nile, we 

 find a group of nations whose physical charac- 

 ters and languages present a complete and 

 almost uninterrupted gradation from those of 

 the proper African tribes to those of the 

 Semitic group. Under the general designation 

 of Nilotic nations may be included the Gallas, 

 the Nubians, the Bishari, and many subordi- 

 nate groups. These come into close ap- 

 proximation, both locally and physically, with 

 the Eastern Negroes of the first division, and 



Fig. 842. 



Souakiiiy Chief, Eastern Nubia. (From a portrait 

 given in " Salt's Travels.") 



with the northern Kaffres of the second. The 

 colour of the Gallas varies from a deep black 



to have been driven back by the Indo-European 

 immigration, and at last to have been limited to 

 the Basque provinces. For anything yet known to 

 the contrary, the structure of the Hottentot lan- 

 guage may, like their physical conformation, be 

 more closely related to that of the Turanian stock 

 than to the Semitic, with which the languages of 

 Northern Africa arc obviously connected. 



