1905.] on Native Races of the British East Africa Protectorate. 118 



sailors and fishermen. My own experience of them has been favour- 

 able, and they clearly stand on a much higher level than most of the 

 native races, so that there is some hope that they may assist in rais- 

 ing and civilising the tribes of the interior. Unfortunately, their 

 superiority seems to depend almost entirely on a continual admixture 

 of Arab blood, and now that the slave trade is abolished and European 

 settlement in Africa is commencing, Arabs tend to frequent the 

 country less and less. This, in some ways, is a pity, for it is well 

 known that hybrids between Europeans and Africans are not a 

 success. 



In religion the Swahilis are mostly Mohammedans, though a good 

 many attend the Christian schools, and they have a pride in genealogy 

 and some taste for literature, both derived from the Arabs. The 

 literature consists of poems and stories, of little interest except as 

 indications of the mental culture of the writers, but also of chronicles 

 of the various cities. Some of these have been published, but others, 

 which exist only in manuscript, will throw a curious light on the 

 colonisation of the East African coast wdien they are made accessiljle. 

 jN"early akin to the Swahilis are the Bajuns, who inhabit the 

 islands of the Lamu archipelago, which lie close to the mainland 

 north of that town. Their language is a dialect of Swahili, and they 

 differ chiefly in their much fairer colour — which is often a hght yellow 

 — and in claiming Persian descent. It would seem that there are 

 good grounds for believing in the establishment of real Persian 

 colonies on this coast, but they were probably much mixed with Arabs, 

 and it is noticeable that Xabahan, which is the name of the Bajun 

 princes, is also the name of a dynasty which reigned in Arabia in 

 Oman. The Bajuns must at one time have had a civilisation of some 

 importance, for they can point to forts and ruined cities of consider- 

 able size, and the political history of their various communities is not 

 without interest. Besides being constantly at war with their neigh- 

 bours, they had an internal triangular duel between the princes, the 

 common people, and the Somalis of the mainland. If was from fear 

 of the latter that the Bajun civilisation was mainly confined to the 

 islands, as, though the Somalis raided the coast, they never took to 

 the sea ; but in some cases the populace combined with the Somalis 

 against the aristocracy and established a dual administration, consist- 

 ing of representatives of the two nations, which in time led to further 

 trouble. 



In thus briefly reviewing the Bantu-speaking races of East Africa, 

 I have treated them as the substratum of East African population 

 affected by the invasion of Arabs, Hamites and Nilotic tribes. It 

 would be wrong, however, to convey the impression that we have any 

 right to assume that this substratum is primary or original. We know 

 hardly anything of the natives of the coast, as opposed to the Arab 

 settlements, before the arrival of the Portuguese, and for the interior we 

 have no history at all but merely native traditions which rarely cover 

 Vol. XVIII. (No. 99) i 



