IV.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO : II. 85 



Thanks to recent political developments in the interior, the 

 linguistic divide may now be traced with some ac- 



' The 



curacy right across the continent. In the extreme Sudanese- 

 west, Sir H. H. Johnston has shown that it coincides 

 with the lower course of the Rio del Rey, while farther east the 

 French expedition of 1891 under M. Dybowski found that it ran 

 at about the same parallel (5 N.) along the elevated plateau 

 which here forms the water-parting between the Congo and the 

 Chad basin. From this point the line takes a south-easterly 

 trend along the southern borders of the Zandeh and Mangbattu 

 territories to the Semliki valley between Lakes Albert Edward 

 and Albert Nyanza, near the equator. Thence it pursues a some- 

 what irregular course, first north by the east side of Lake Albert 

 Nyanza to the mouth of the Somerset Nile, then up that river to 

 Mruli and round the east side of Usoga and the Victoria Nyanza 

 to Kavirondo Bay, where it turns nearly east to the sources of 

 the Tana, and down that river to its mouth in the Indian Ocean. 



At some points the line traverses debatable territory, as in 

 the Semliki valley, where there are Sudanese and Negrito over- 

 lappings, and again beyond Lake Victoria, where the frontiers 

 are broken by the Hamitic Masai nomads and their Wandorobbo 

 allies. But, speaking generally, everything south of the line here 

 traced is Bantu, everything north of it Sudanese Negro in the 

 western and central regions, and Hamitic in the eastern section 

 between Lake Victoria and the Indian Ocean. 



In some districts the demarcation is not quite distinct, as in 

 the Tana basin, where some of the Galla and 

 Somali Hamites from the north have encroached Tribes 



on the territory of the Wapokomo Bantus on the 

 south side of the river. But on the central plateau 

 M. Dybowski passed abruptly from the territory of the Bonjos, 

 northernmost of the Bantu tribes, to that of the Sudanese Band- 

 ziri, a branch of the wide-spread Zandeh people. In this region, 

 about the crest of the Congo-Chad water-parting, the contrasts 

 appear to be all in favour of the Sudanese and against the Bantus, 

 probably because here the former are Negroids, the latter full- 

 blood Negroes. Thus Dybowski 1 found the Bonjos to be a 



1 Le Naturaliste, Jan. 1894. 



