Liberia «•' 



some of them migrated to the opposite island of Fernando Po. 

 Then later they penetrated up all the affluents of the Congo 

 from west to east, and later still pushed their way, though 

 much more faint-heartedly, into the Congo Forest from the 

 north-east. Racially they have not completely absorbed the 

 Congo regions yet, since there still exist the Congo Pygmies 

 and the short-legged Forest Negroes. 



4. The Madi group. This would include a great many 

 of the non-Bantu Negro languages immediately to the north 

 of the Congo Basin — forms of speech such as the Madi, 

 Momvu {?), Lendu (?), Nyam-Nyam (?), Manbettu, etc. These 

 languages offer slight resemblances in their phonology to the 

 Bantu, and occasionally in their grammar, or even in the roots 

 of some of their principal words. Yet they are emphatically 

 outside the Bantu family, and present but little resemblance 

 to each other. It can only be said that they differ less from 

 each other than they resemble the surrounding language groups 

 to the north, east, and west. 



5. The Nilotic family. This also, like the Bantu, is 

 rather clearly marked in its features and in the relationships 

 of its various members. The forms of Nilotic speech extend 

 almost as far west as Lake Chad in some directions, as far east 

 as the confines of Galaland and Abyssinia. On the north they 

 reach to within two hundred miles south of Khartum, and on 

 the south and south-east in the form of the Masai group they 

 extend into the Bantu language-field south of the Equator. 



6. The Nuba family. A group of Negro languages spoken 

 by people that are much more Negroid than Negro — ^the 

 present inhabitants of Nubia, Kordofan, and Darfur. This 

 group merges into the next. 



7. The Baghirmi group. This in a loose way includes 

 most of the languages of Wadai, of Baghirmi, and the valley 



1 102 



