256 LIBERIA. 



North African dialect. It seems to me that in some cases the Cau- 

 casian element in the Manclingos was deriAed from direct intermix- 

 ture of Berbers and Arabs from North Africa with the negroes of 

 the Upper Niger. I doubt if any pure-blooded Fula people extend 

 their range into the northern limits of Liberia; but they have had 

 an undoubted influence in times past over the development of the 

 park land which lies beyond the forest. By their minglings with the 

 indigenous negroes of the Sudanese and West African type they have 

 created the Mandingo peoples and have also carried Mohammedan 

 civilization and tenets into that part of Africa, as well as, no doubt, 

 the Sudanese breeds of cattle and sheep. The domestic sheep of all 

 the forest region of Liberia is that common to the other forested parts 

 of West Africa — the sheep with erect ears, fairly well-developed 

 horns, small size, black and wdiite coloring, a tail without any fatty 

 development, and a long throat mane in the male. Far back in the 

 interior of Liberia I am informed that the Mandingo slieej) are simi- 

 lar to those of the Sudan, with fat tails and without the throat mane. 



It should hardly come within the limits of the present paper to 

 discuss one of the most interesting problems in Africa — the origin 

 of the Fula race. Personally I am still disposed toward the old 

 theory that the Fulas were an early cross between the Libyans of 

 North Africa and the negroes of Senegal, a cross in which the Cau- 

 casian element predominated considerably. They certainly offer 

 marked resemblances, however, to the Flamitic aristocracy of the 

 I^l)per Nile and the lake regions. Their language is a complete 

 puzzle. At present it can not be said to offer affinities of a marked 

 kind to any group of negro speech, but it is emphatically a negro 

 tongue (with a faint suggestion here and there of the Bantu family), 

 and not in any way influenced by Hamitic, Libyan, or Semitic char- 

 acteristics. As to the Libyan affinities of Hausa there can be no 

 doubt, but nothing of the kind has as yet been discerned in the struc- 

 ture or vocabulary of the Fulfulde. It even seems to offer less resem- 

 blances in structure to tlie Hamitic language family, for example, 

 than can be discerned in the Bantu. 



Of all the peoples in Liberia affiliated witli the Kru stock perhaps 

 the most numerous group is that of the Kru, which occupies the coast 

 of Liberia between the French frontier at the Kavalli River and the 

 river Sestos. With the Kru I associate the Grebo, as the two peoples 

 differ but little in language and scarcely at all in physical type. The 

 Grebos are inclining strongly toward Christianity, but very few, if 

 any, converts to that religion have been made among the Kru people 

 proper who inhabit the coast between Greenville and Garraway. 

 Krus and Grebos together number something like 375,000. The next 

 most important group of people, as regards numbers, are the ]\Ian- 

 dingos, of whom there are perhaps 300,000 within the limits of Libe- 



