76 MAN : PAST AND PRESENT. [CHAP. 



Before the incursions of the Nubo-Arab traders and raiders, 



who began to form settlements (zeribas, fenced 



Peoples of the stations) in the Upper Nile regions above Khartum 



about the middle of the nineteenth century, most 

 of the Nile-Congo divide (White Nile tributaries 

 and Welle-Makua basin) belonged in the strictest sense to 

 the Negro domain. Sudanese tribes, and even great nations 

 reckoned by millions, had been for ages in almost undisturbed 

 possession, not only of the main stream from the equatorial lakes 

 to and beyond the Sobat junction, but also of the Sobat valley 

 itself, and of the numerous south-western head-waters of the 

 White Nile converging about Lake No above the Sobat junction. 

 Nearly all the Nilotic peoples the Shillnks and Dinkas about 

 the Sobat confluence, the Bari and Nuers of the Bahr-el-Jebel, 

 the Bongos (Dors\ Rols, Golos, Mittus, Madis, Makarakas, 

 Abakas, Mundus, and many others about the western affluents, as 

 well as the Funj of Senaar had been brought under the Khedivial 

 rule before the revolt of the Mahdi. 



The same fate had already overtaken or was threatening the 



formerly powerful Mombuttu (Mangbattu) and Zandeh (Niam- 



Niani] nations of the Welle lands, as well as the Krej and others 



about the low watersheds of the Nile-Congo and Chad basins. 



Since then the Welle groups have been subjected to the jurisdic- 



tion of the Congo Free State, while the political 



Political destinies of the Nilotic tribes must henceforth be 



Relations. . . 



controlled by the British masters of the Nile lands 

 from the Great Lakes to the Mediterranean. 



Although grouped as Negroes proper, very few of the Nilotic 

 peoples present the almost ideal type of the blacks, such as those 

 of Upper Guinea and the Atlantic coast of West Sudan. The 

 complexion is in general less black, the nose less broad at the 

 base, the lips less everted (Shilluks and one or two others 

 excepted), the hair rather less frizzly, the dolichocephaly and 

 prognathism less marked. 



Apart from the more delicate shades of transition, due to 

 diverse interminglings with Hamites and Semites, 

 two distinct types may be plainly distinguished- 

 one black, often very tall and long-headed (Shilluks, 



