48 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



carried on a flourishing trade, especially in slaves and gold. But 

 this gold was still supposed to come from the earlier kingdom of 

 Guine, which word consequently still remains associated with the 

 precious metal in the popular belief. About the year T 500 Mali was 

 captured by the Sonrhay king, Omar Askia, after which the empire 

 fell to pieces, and its memory now survives only in the ethnical 

 term MaWnke. 



Felups. From the semi-civilised Muhammadan negroid Man- 

 dingans to the utterly savage full-blood negro 

 Felups the transition is abrupt, but instructive. 



inland and j n other regions the heterogeneous ethnical groups 



Coast Peoples. . l 



crowded into upland valleys, as in the Caucasus, 

 have been called the "sweepings of the plains." But in 

 West Sudan there are no great ranges towering above the low- 

 lands, and even the "Kong Mountains" of school geographies 

 have now been wiped out by Capt. Binger \ Hence the rude 

 aborigines of the inland plateau, retreating before the steady 

 advance of Islam, found no place of refuge till they reached the 

 indented fjord-like Atlantic seaboard, where many still hold their 

 ground. This is the explanation of the striking contrasts now 

 witnessed between the interior and so many parts of the West 

 Coast ; on the one hand powerful political organizations with 

 numerous, more or less homogeneous, and semi-civilised negroid 

 populations, on the other an infinite tangle of ethnical and 

 linguistic groups, all alike weltering in the sheerest savagery, or 

 in grades of barbarism even worse than the wild state. 



Even the Felnps, whose territory now stretches from the 

 Gambia to the Cacheo, but formerly reached the 



Felup Type 



and Mental Geba and the Bissagos Islands, do not form a 



single group. Originally the name of an obscure 



coast-tribe, the term Felup or Fulup has been extended by the 



Portuguese traders to all the surrounding peoples Ayaniats, 



Jolas, Jigitshes, Vacas, Joats, Karons, Banyuns, Banjars, Fidiins, 



Bayots and some others who amid much local diversity, presented 



a sufficiently general outward resemblance to be regarded as a 



1 " La chaine des Montagnes tie Kong n'a jamais existe que dans 

 ^'imagination de quelques voyageurs mal renseignes" (op. cit. I. p. 285). 



