IV.] THE AFRICAN NEGRO: II. J.O3 



both to the Portuguese and Moslem Arabs, and those who object 



to the Himyarites should at least be prepared with a reasonable 



alternative. There are, of course, the Axumites of Abyssinia, 



with their seaport of Adulis at the head of the Arabian Gulf; but 



they also were Himyarites, so that it would only be 



a question of dates. In any case the Christian Hhn 0l Stic 



Axumites are excluded, because the emblems on 



the monuments are distinctly pagan, and point to Semitic rites, 



such as those later revealed to the western world by the Phoenicians, 



who were themselves possibly sprung from a Minaean ancestry. 



With the Bechuanas, whose territory extends from the Orange 

 river to Lake Ngami and includes Basutoland with a great part of 

 the two Boer states, we again meet a people at the totemic stage 

 of culture. Here the eponymous heroes of the 

 Zulu-Xosas are replaced by baboons, fishes, ele- rhe Bechu - 



' anas. 



phants, and other animals from which the various 

 tribal groups claim descent The origin of the collective national 

 name has been much discussed ever since the Bechuanas were 

 first visited by Liechtenstein early in the nineteenth century 1 . But 

 there seems little doubt that it is a slightly modified form of Ba- 

 C/utene, " People of the Chuene" i.e. of the Cape baboon, this 

 animal being the totem of the Barotse, who are recognised by all 

 the others as the elder branch or mother-tribe of the family. 



With these Barotse is connected one of the most remarkable 

 episodes in the turbulent history of the South 

 African peoples during the nineteenth century. E mph-f. a 

 Many years ago a section of the tribe migrated to 

 the Middle Zambesi above the Victoria Falls, where they founded 

 a powerful state, the " Barotse (Marotse) Empire," which despite a 

 temporary eclipse still exists as a British protectorate (1898). The 

 eclipse was caused by another migration northwards 

 of a great body of Makololos, a branch of the kin- lo h E p Tsode~. 

 dred Basutos, who under the renowned chief 

 Sebituane reached the Zambesi about 1835 an d overthrew the 

 Barotse dynasty, reducing the natives to a state of servitude. 



1 Reisen, &c., 1803-6, Berlin, 1811. This writer already speaks of the 

 ' Beetjuana race " in a collective sense, and he was the first to divine the vast 

 range of the Bantu Linguistic Family, as it was afterwards called. 



