62 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Trarsas and Braknas of the Senegal, the Bejas, Danakils, and 

 many Abyssinians of the region between the Nile and the Red 

 Sea. Barth, to whom we still owe the best account of this his- 

 torical people, describes them as of a dull, morose temperament, 

 the most unfriendly and churlish of all the peoples visited by him 

 in Negroland. 



This writer's suggestion that they may have formerly had 



relations with the Egyptians 1 has been revived in 

 Origins 37 an exaggerated form by M. Felix Dubois, whose 



views have received currency in England through 

 uncritical notices of his Timbouctou la Mysterieuse (Paris, 1897). 



But there is no "mystery" in the matter. The 

 Theorfes. a Sonrhay are a Sudanese people, whose exodus from 



Egypt is a myth, and whose Kissur language, as it is 

 called, has not the remotest connection with any form of speech 

 known to have been at any time current in the Nile valley". Such 

 dumping down of a whole people on the Niger bend, after travers- 

 ing some thousands of miles of sandy wastes or densely settled 

 plains, has naturally excited the ridicule of serious students, such 

 as Herr Brix Forster, whose caustic exposure of the myth may be 

 seen in Globus, 71, p. 193 sq. 3 



The Sonrhay empire, like that of the rival Mandingans, claims 



a respectable antiquity, its reputed founder Za-el- 



Yemeni having flourished about 680 A.D. Za Kasi, 



fifteenth in succession from the founder, was the 



1 As so much has been made of Earth's authority in this connection, it may 

 be well to quote his exact words: " It would seem as if they (the Sonrhay) had 

 received, in more ancient times, several institutions from the Egyptians, with 

 whom, I have no doubt, they maintained an intercourse by means of the 

 energetic inhabitants of Aujila from a relatively ancient period " (iv. p. 426). 

 Barth, therefore, does not bring the people themselves, or their language, from 

 Egypt, but only some of their institutions, and that indirectly through the 

 Aujila Oasis in Cyrenaica, and it may be added that this intercourse with 

 Aujila appears to date only from about 1150 A.D. (iv. p. 585). 



' Hacquard et Dupuis, Manuel de la langue Son gay, parlee de Tombouctoii 

 a Say, dans la boucle du Niger, 1897, passim. 



3 Of M. Dubois' theory this writer remarks that it " tragt entvveder den 

 Stempel phantasiereicher Willkur oder entbehrt des Ruhmes unser Wissen durch 

 neue Thatsachen bereichern zu konnen, " p. 195. 



