III.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO : I. SUDANESE. 43 



of horns, and an entire stranger in the locality can at once 

 translate the rhythm into words 1 ." 



Similar contrasts and analogies will receive due illustration 

 in the detailed account here following of the several more repre- 

 sentative Sudanese groups. 



WEST SUDANESE. 



Wolofs. Throughout its middle and lower course the Senegal 

 river, which takes its name from the Zenaga Berbers, forms the ethni- 

 cal "divide" between the Hamites and the Sudanese Negroes. The 

 latter are here represented by the Wolofs, who with the kindred 

 Jolofs and Serers occupy an extensive territory between the Sene- 

 gal and the Gambia rivers. Whether the term "Wolof" means 

 "Talkers," as if they alone were gifted with the faculty of speech, 

 or " Blacks " in contrast to the neighbouring " Red " Fulahs, both 

 interpretations are fully justified by these Senegambians, at once 

 the very blackest and amongst the most garrulous tribes in the 

 whole of Africa. The colour is called "ebony," and they are 

 commonly spoken of as " Blacks of the Black." They are also 

 very tall even for Negroes, and the Serers especially may claim to 

 be " the Patagonians of the Old World," men six feet six inches 

 high and proportionately muscular being far from rare in the 

 coast districts about St Louis and Dakar. 



Their language, which is widespread throughout Senegambia, 

 may be taken as a typical Sudanese form of speech, 

 unlike any other in its peculiar agglutinative struc- woloTspeech 

 ture, and unaffected even in its vocabulary by the 

 Hamitic which has been current for ages on the opposite bank of 

 the Senegal. A remarkable feature is the so-called "article," always 

 postfixed and subject to a two-fold series of modifications, first in 

 accordance with the initial consonant of the noun, for which there 

 are six possible consonantal changes (w, ;//, b, d, s, ^), and then 



1 A. B. Ellis, The Tshi-speaking Peoples, &c., 1887, pp. 327-8. Only one 

 European, Herr R. Betz, long resident amongst the Dualas of the Cameruns 

 district, has yet succeeded in mastering the drum language ; he claims to 

 understand nearly all that is drummed and is also able to drum himself. 

 (Athenaeum, May 7, 1898, p. 6n.) 



