1905.] Native Races of the British East Africa Protectorate. 105 



WEEKLY EVEXING MEETING, 

 Friday, Miij 11), 1905. 



The Eael of Ro8SE, K.P. D.C.L. LL.D. D.Sc. F.R.S., 



Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Sir Chaeles Eliot, K.C.M.G., lately H.M. Commissioner 

 for the Protectorate. 



The Native Races of the British East Africa Protectorate. 



My object tonight is to attempt to explain the present distribution 

 of races in East Africa, and to touch on the far more difficult problem 

 of how that distribution has arisen. You are doubtless aware that 

 both the population and geography of this region are very different 

 from those of West Africa. Its chief physical feature is that at a 

 short distance from the coast is a belt of high grassy plateaus, rising 

 to an altitude of five to ten thousand feet and descending in the west 

 to the great equatorial lakes and the forests beyond them. But on 

 the eastern side, the coast is divided from the good lands of the 

 interior by a belt of jungle which has been pierced only by the 

 Uganda railway. Hence, hitherto, the migrations of races and the 

 transmission of foreign influence have tended to take a northerly or 

 southerly direction, while there has been hardly any connection 

 between the east and west ; between the coast, for instance, and lake 

 Victoria. 



Our East African territories are the meeting place of many races. 

 They have been carved out in ol^edience to considerations of politics, 

 not of geography or ethnography, and hence they contain not only a 

 dense and fairly uniform population round lake Victoria, but also 

 the ends and margins of many suiTOunding districts with the most 

 various inhabitants, such as tlie edge of the Congo territories, the end 

 of the Sudanese swamps, the southern extremity of Somaliland, and 

 portions of tribes who extend into Abyssinia. The whole country has 

 little or no connection with the Negroes of West Africa. Its inhabi- 

 tants may be succinctly described as a substratum of Bantu population, 

 thick in the low parts but sparse in the high cool districts, which has 

 been invaded from the north by the Somalis and Gallas, and from the 

 north-west by tribes of somewhat disputable affinities but closely 

 allied to one another, and including the Masai, Nandi, Turkana, and 

 other less known names. It might possibly be argued that the 

 Bantus are the invaders and that the other tribes represent the older 

 inhabitants, but though we have very little in the way of history to 

 guide us, everything indicates that the other theory is more probable. 



Perhaps, before proceeding to a more detailed description, it will 



