CHAPTER XYIII 



NILOTIC NEGROES 



rj^HK author of this book attempts his definitions of the different Negro 

 -L types with considerable hesitancy. There rises up before him the 

 overpowering conviction that, although there may be four or five well- 

 marked varieties of the typical Negro, specimens of all or most of these 

 varieties may be found in nearly every negro tribe. It is, therefore, 

 difficult to point to any one group of negroes which share without deviation 

 the same type of language, beliefs, manners, and customs, and, equally 

 present to the observer, identical physical characterisation. He has written 

 thus deprecatingly when discussing the Bantu type, for amongst the 

 Bantu Negroes there are people short and simian, like the ugly Congo 

 Dwarfs, and others tall and handsome, like the better type of Zulu, 

 Manyema, or Kavirondo. Broadly speaking, the Negro race in Africa may 

 be divided into three main groups: (1) the Negro in general — the big 

 black man ranging from Abyssinia to Senegal and from Lake Chad to 

 Cape Colony; (2) the Congo Pygmy ; and (3) the Hottentot -Bushman. In 

 this chapter the present writer is again brought to consider the difficulty 

 of connecting homogeneous physical traits with any one of those great and 

 small divisions of the Negro peoples which depend mainly on groupings 

 of language or adventitious political circumstances. The Negroes of the 

 Nile basin, from the Victoria Nile and Albert Nyanza on the south to 

 the verge of the Nubians, Arabs, Abyssinians, and Galas on the north, 

 share a few peculiarities in common, and may be, perhaps, conveniently 

 classed together for the present purpose of discussing their physical 

 features, manners, and customs. 



Tnc bodily type of the true Nile Negro extends from the western 

 frontiers of Abyssinia through the Bahr-al-Ghazal region to Bornu, perhaps 

 • •veil t<> the Central Niger,* and from about 200 miles south of Khartum 

 to the north-eastern shores of the Victoria Nyanza This type may be 

 roughly described as follows : A head inclining to be broad rather than 

 long, with a slight protruding muzzle and retreating chin; cheek-bones 



* It is also very similar to the Hausa and Sofighai type in West Central Africa. 



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