AFRICAN NATIONS. 1007 



Equator is occupied by the Kaffre tribes and their allies, which cannot be 

 truly designated as Negroes: so that the true Negro area is limited to the 

 western portion of the African continent, including the alluvial valleys of 

 the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Niger, with a narrow strip of Central 

 Africa, passing eastwards to the alluvial regions of the Upper Nile. Even 

 within this area, the true Negro type of conformation, such as we see in the 

 races which inhabit the low countries near the Slave Coast, consisting in the 

 combination of the prognathous form of skull with receding forehead and 

 depressed nose, thick lips, black woolly hair, jet black unctuous skin, and 

 crooked legs, is by no means universally prevalent; for many of the nations 

 which inhabit it must be ranked as siibtypical Negroes; and from these the 

 gradation in physical characters is by no means abrupt, to those African 

 nations which possess, in a considerable degree, the attributes which we are 

 accustomed to exclude altogether from our idea of the African race. Thus, 

 the race of Jolofs near the benegal, and the Guber in the interior of Sudan, 

 have woolly hair and deep black complexions, but fine forms and regular 

 features of a European cast; and nearly the same may be said of the darkest 

 of the Kaffres of Southern Africa. The Bechuana Kaffrea present a still 

 nearer approach to the European type; the complexion being of a light 

 brown, the hair often not woolly but merely curled, or even in long flowing 

 ringlets, and the figure and features having much of the European char- 

 acter. There is no group, in fact, which presents a more constant corre- 

 spondence between external conditions and physical conformation, than that 

 composed of the African nations. As we find the complexion becoming 

 gradually darker, in passing from Northern to Southern Europe, thence to 

 North Africa, thence to the borders of the Great Desert, and thence to the 

 intertropical region where alone the dullest black is to be met with, so do 

 we find, on passing southwards from this, that the hue becomes gradually 

 lighter in proportion as we proceed further from the equator, until we meet 

 with races of comparatively fair complexions among the nations of Southern 

 Africa. Even in the iutertropical region, high elevations of the surface 

 have the same effect as we have seen them to produce elsewhere, in lighten- 

 ing the complexion. Thus the high parts of Senegambia, where the tem- 

 perature is moderate and even cool at times, are inhabited by Fulahs of a 

 light copper color, whilst the nations inhabiting the lower regions around 

 them are of true Negro blackness: and nearly on the same parallel, but at 

 the opposite side of Africa, are the high plains of Euarea and Kaffa, of 

 which the inhabitants are said to be fairer than the natives of Southern 

 Europe. 



852. The languages of the Negro nations, so far as they are known, ap- 

 pear to belong to one group; for although there is a considerable diversity 

 in their vocabularies (arising in great part from the want of written records 

 which would give fixity to their tongues), yet they seem to present the same 

 grade of development and the same grammatical forms; and various proofs 

 of their affinity with the Semitic languages have been developed, these being 

 afforded by similarity alike of roots and of grammatical construction. The 

 Semitic affinity of the Negro nations is further indicated in a very remark- 

 able manner, by the existence of a variety of superstitions and usages among 

 the Negroes of the Western coast, closely resembling those which prevail 

 also among the Nilotic races whose Semitic relations are most clear, as well 

 as among branches of the Semitic stock itself; and thus we seem to have 

 adequate proof of the absence of any definite line of demarcation, in regard 

 either to physiological or to linguistic characters between the Negro race, and 

 one of those which has been hitherto considered to rank among the most 

 elevated forms of the Caucasian variety. Nor is there anything in the 



