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AFRICA: 



CHAPTER XII. 



INTRODUCTORY THE PYGMY OR NEGRILLO RACES THE 

 PEOPLE OF MADAGASCAR. 



a. INTKODUCTOKY. . 



THE peoples of Africa include representatives of each of the three principal divisions of mankind. 

 Africa is the main home of the Negro: its northern and north-eastern regions are occupied 

 by members of the Caucasian group; while the third division, the Mongolian, is represented 

 by the dominant people of Madagascar, who are Malays. To these three groups it is convenient 

 to add a fourth for the Bushmen of South Africa and the pygmies of Equatorial Africa, whose 

 exact relations are uncertain. The study of the African peoples is accordingly complicated, 

 especially since difficulties are introduced by the scarcity of historical evidence, our comparative 

 ignorance of important tribes, the wide extent of nomadism, the continual intermixture of 

 alien races, and the destruction of tribes by war and famine. The typical members of the 

 three groups show definite, distinctive characters. The broad-nosed, thick-lipped, curly-haired, 

 dark-brown native of the Congo is unquestionably a Negro; the intellectual-looking, straight- 

 nosed, thin-lipped, small-chiuned, long-haired Berber is as clearly a Caucasian; the Hova of 

 Madagascar is as manifestly a Mongol. But the races as a whole have not kept true; the 

 intermingling of the border tribes and intermarriage with slaves captured in war have 

 resulted in the formation of intermediate races, whose characters are mixed. It is difficult, 

 for example, to know whether the Waganda should be regarded as a Negro race which has 

 been altered by Caucasian immigration, or as a Caucasian race altered by the absorption of 

 Negro blood. 



It is accordingly impossible to mark off sharply the boundaries of the different racial divisions 

 in Africa. But in a general way their distribution can be fairly well denned. The Bushmen 

 occur in the extreme south, and range northward along the western side of the continent to 

 about the twentieth degree of south latitude. The pygmy tribes are scattered over the 



Equatorial belt from the west coast almost 



to the east coast, while there is said to be 



one tribe in Southern Morocco. The Negroes 



are divided into four groups: the Bantu, 



ranging from the Cape to near the Equator; 



the Guinea Negroes, in Western Africa, from 



Senegal to the Niger Delta; the Equatorial 



Negroes, occurring in a series of disconnected 



areas across Africa, from the Gabun to 



Mount Kenya; and the Nilotic Negroes, 



living in the Upper Nile Basin, on the 



eastern shore of the Victoria Nyanza, and 



southward along the Rift Valley to Kilima 



Njaro. The Caucasian race is represented 



by two divisions: the more important is 



Photo t>y ui: Fntsch. the Hamitic, including the Gallas, Somali, 



A BUSHMAN. some of the Abyssinians, and the tribes 



2fi5 



I'hoto bij Dr. Fritsch. 

 A BUSHMAN. 

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