210 HISTORY OF THE PROTECTORATE TERRITORIES 



Pv^mies (who, according to the tradition^ of the negroes on the Congo 

 watershed, formerly dwelt in large numbers in the Bahr-al-Ghazal forests), 

 chimpanzees, and perhaps certain monkeys. It would indeed be surprising 

 if the powerful dynasties which arose in Egy})t and Nubia from time to 

 time during something like 4,000 years had made no attempt to increase 

 the commei'ce of their country in the direction of the Black Man's 

 Country. From Khartum the Egyptian boats might so easily have 

 ascended the Nile, assuming that river to be free of sudd, to the precincts 

 of what is now the Uganda Protectorate. Or from the same region above 

 Khartum there was probably no hostility on tlie i)art of the timid, badly 

 armed natives to prevent the Egyptian and Nubian traders advancing 

 overland witli their caravans in the direction of Mount Elgon. 



But whether Egyptian commerce or Egyptian rule did or did not 

 have any direct contact with these countries at the sources of the Nile, 

 the influence of Egyptian civilisation profoundly affected Negro Africa. 

 With the excej'tion of the few cultivated plants and domestic animals 

 which troj)ical Africa has received from Brazil through the Portuguese, or 

 which have been landed on its east coast from India by Asiatic traders, 

 all the remaining domestic animals and cultivated plants known to the 

 Negro have reached him by way of Egypt. From Egypt also came ideas 

 for the making of ]»lanked canoes, such as those used by natives of 

 Uganda, and I he (h'>igiis for musical instruments of a more complicated 

 nature than the drum, the antelope-horn trumpet, or the bowstring. The 

 Uganda harps are exactly like those depicted on the Egyptian monuments. 

 Is it i)Ossible that some of the " Bahima " (the aristocracy of Hamitic type 

 prevalent in Western Uganda, Unyoro, Toro, Ankole, part of the adjoining 

 Congo Free State, and the countries on the south-east of the Victoria 

 Nyanza and towards the north and east of Tanganyika) are the descendants 

 of traders from Etliiopia, who came to these countries many centuries 

 ago? The Bahima have completely forgotten any Hamitic language that 

 they may have once spoken. They speak now, with a marked accent of 

 their own, the Bantu language of the country where they dominate as 

 an aristocracy or where they serve as proud cal tie-keepers. The Bahima. 

 must have mingled in ancient times — possibly they mingle still to some 

 extent — with the surrounding Negroes, from whom they have derived 

 their closer, woollier hair, and, in some individuals, their darker colour. 

 But one notices amongst them again and again a type of face startlingly 

 Egyptian in its ujain features, and sometimes not much darker in 

 complexion. 



Tradition amongst the natives does not enable us to fix even ap[)roxi- 

 mately the date at which the countries round the Nile sources began to 

 he invaded by a superior race of Hamitic features coming, presumably, from 



