HAXTU I'LACli-.\.\Mi:s IN AFKJCA. 2yi 



the Aruniwini Kixcr and the Con^^o border to tlie iiortli is 

 almost entirely Soudanese in languaiL,a' ( 1 use Meinhof's con- 

 sidered term for the loosely-knit neii^ro family of tongues in 

 West and North Central Africa, as the ter'.ium quid to Bantu 

 and Hamite). Po the south, however, of the line just traced, 

 from 7° N. to the lujuator at Lake Edward, we have to reckon 

 with Soudanese intrusions as far as 2' N., into the Duala-Tanga- 

 Fan l-^'ields on the west, and east of the Congo as far as to the 

 Line, while some are found as far as south as the neighbour- 

 hood to the east of Lake Leo])old IL 



In the fork between the Albert-Kivu chain of lakes and the 

 Victoria Nile is almost solid Bantu ; the eastern shore of Victoria 

 Nyanza, as Ave have already pointed out, is mainly Bantu, re- 

 lieved with Soudanese, but a great arm of the Hamites (e.g., the 

 Ngiewa, but mainly Masai, with Ndorobo stretching to Speke 

 Gulf) runs down the highlands from the Galla country to that 

 opposite Zanzibar ; the Bantu, however, of the valley of the 

 -Vthi runs up through this Masai country to Kikuyu, and 

 another smaller line runs along the Shambala Hills and Pare 

 Mountains to the Chagga of Kilimanjaro, where the Bantu have 

 held their ground, including an enclave of Mlugu, a remote tribe 

 of Soudanese. The Nege pigmies, near Lake Njarasa, have a 

 language allied to Bushman, which has itself some touch with 

 Soudanese peculiarities. 



In these last pages I have been mainly dealing with the 

 sphere of Bantu-speaking tribes, but as we have seen in South 

 Africa that many Hottentot and Bushman names survived the 

 Bantu invasion (and even the European), even where those 

 languages have entirely died out, so we must be prepared to 

 find, on the northern border, Soudanese and Hamite names inter- 

 mixed with the Bantu, and possibly some Bantu names left 

 behind in the present Hamitic territory. 



We have now traced the Bantu place-names limit on the 

 west coast and on the east as far south as Walfisch Ba3\ and the 

 Kaffirland borders respectively ; and from the Cameroons also 

 to the Swahili coast. The remainder of our paper will but touch 

 the fringe of the great problem of the meaning of the place- 

 names, and the recurrence of similar names in widely sundered 

 territories. 



But first we must pause to envisage, however vaguely, the 

 probable line of advance of different divisions of the great Bantu 

 race; and here we must note the geographical characteristics of 

 Central Africa. 



The entry into East Africa in prehistoric times is usually consi- 

 dered to have been through Arabia. Taking for granted an immigra- 

 tion from Asia by this route, we picture the immigrants brought 

 up against the Abyssinian plateau on arrival. They can either 

 follow the Red Sea to the north, or turn to the south of the 

 plateau. However this obstacle was negotiated by various immi- 



