III.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO : I. SUDANESE. 39 



number of Nyasa natives, and if he were not remarkably distin- 

 guished from them by dress or tribal marks, it would not be easy 

 to pick him out 1 ." 



Nevertheless considerable differences are perceptible to the 

 practised eye, and the contrasts are sufficiently 



J ... Two Main 



marked to justify ethnologists in treating the sections: Su- 



Sudanese and the Bantus as two distinct sub- 

 divisions of the family. In both groups the 

 relatively full-blood natives are everywhere very much alike, 

 and the contrasts are presented chiefly amongst the mixed or 

 Negroid populations. In Sudan the disturbing elements are 

 both Hamitic (Berbers and Tuaregs) and Semitic (Arabs) ; while in 

 Bantuland they are mainly Hamitic (Gallas) in all the central and 

 southern districts, and Arabs on the eastern seaboard from the 

 equator to Sofala beyond the Zambesi. To the varying propor- 

 tions of these several ingredients may perhaps be traced the often 

 very marked differences observable on the one hand between such 

 Sudanese peoples as the Wolofs, Mandingans, Hausas, Nubians, 

 Zandehs, and Mangbattus, and on the other between all these and 

 the Swahili, Waganda, Zulu-Xosas, Bechuanas, Ovahereros and 

 some other Negroid Bantus. 



But the distinction is based on social, linguistic, and cultural, 

 as well as on physical grounds, so that, as at present constituted, the 

 Sudanese and Bantus really constitute two tolerably well-defined 

 branches of the Negro family. Thanks to Muham- 

 madan influences, the former have attained a much Analogies 3 

 higher level of culture. They cultivate not only the 

 alimentary but also the economic plants, such as cotton and 

 indigo ; they build stone dwellings, walled towns, substantial 

 mosques and minarets ; they have founded powerful states, such 

 as those of the Hausas and Sonrhays, of Ghanah and Bornu, with 

 written records going back a thousand years, although these 

 historical peoples are all without exception half-breeds, often with 

 more Semitic and Hamitic than Ethiopic blood in their veins. 



No such cultured peoples are anywhere to be found in Bantu- 

 land except on the east coast, where the " Moors " founded great 



1 Sir H. H. Johnston, British Central Africa, 1897, p. 393. 



