320 NA TIVES OF EASTERN BRITISH EAST AFRICA part hi 



language, of an altogether different race-group. A well-trained 

 sense of hearing gives many of the people a remarkable facility 

 in the acquisition of new languages ; and nomadic habits, national 

 migrations, and intertribal commerce have given abundant scope 

 for the exercise of this useful faculty. Slaves have introduced 

 forms and phrases into the language of their owners ; helot 

 tribes have been forced to learn the tongue of their masters ; 

 and conquerors have adopted the speech of the conquered. On 

 the one hand, for example, the Bantu Wasania^ now speak a 

 dialect of Galla, just as the Aryans of Phrygia have adopted 

 the language of their Turkish conquerors, or as the Celts of 

 Western Europe have in the main accepted those of their 

 Teutonic or Latin neighbours. On the other hand, the Hamitic 

 race which invaded Uganda has now adopted the language 

 of the Bantu people whom it conquered, just as the Teutonic 

 Normans and Lombards exchanged their own for a Latin 

 tongue. 



Owing to the extent to which both the physical and philo- 

 logical data have been affected, it is obvious that the study of 

 the African people would be an especially difficult branch of the 

 science of anthropology, even if all the available information had 

 been obtained and — had been collected by experts. But we 

 know nothing of many tribes whose evidence would be most 

 important ; while others, who might have supplied useful links 

 of evidence, have been crushed out by famine or war, and left 

 either no trace of their existence, or, like the Zimbas, live only 

 as the memory of a once-dreaded name. Most of what is 

 known, moreover, is due to the reports of travellers, whose 

 opportunities of intercourse with the natives have been very 

 limited, and who have brought no special training to the task 

 of observation. 



It might therefore seem wiser to attempt nothing more than 

 the record of new facts in the tabular form approved by anthro- 

 pologists ; but the problems connected with this subject are so 

 interesting, that we cannot dismiss the African native with a 

 simple tabulation of nose lengths, and a iew pages of com- 

 parative vocabulary. 



In spite of all the difficulties of the subject, it is now 

 generally agreed that the African tribes may be divided 



1 A tribe living on the Sabaki, and elsewhere on the East Coast ; see p. 328. 



