350 



THE LIVING RACES OF MANKIND 



They especially excel in the last. They have clay furnaces and charcoal fuel, blown by a pair 

 of double bellows. The forge is a round cavity scooped in the ground; the anvil is a large 

 piece of iron; and the hammers are solid iron cones, like pestles. 



The Fan method of hunting which Miss Kingsley has graphically described is 

 unsportsmanlike. A herd of elephants is driven into an enclosure of felled trees, or such an 

 enclosure is made round a herd when it is at rest. The walls of the enclosure are smeared 

 with an evil-smelling mixture, the odour of which the elephants find so repellent that they 

 make no effort to burst through the enclosure. The elephants are then supplied with poisoned 

 plantains, or the pools in the enclosure are also poisoned. The poison is not fatal, but it 

 makes the elephants weak and drowsy. When it has had sufficient time to do its work, fires 

 are lighted round the fence, and the hunters steal into the enclosure and climb into trees, 

 from which they shoot the elephants as they run past them. 



The main trade articles of the Fans are rubber, which they collect in the forests, and 

 ivory. They have an interesting coinage of iron imitation axe-heads, the circulation of which 



is limited within the tribe. 



Marriage is a matter of purchase; but there 

 are many limitations, as blood-relatives are for- 

 bidden to marry. 



Why they have no funeral rites is explained 

 by the prevalence of cannibalism, which is 

 certainly practised by the tribe. Miss Kingsley 

 remarks that, "although a prevalent habit, it 

 is no danger, I think, to white people, except 

 as regards the bother it gives in preventing 

 one's black companions from getting eaten. The 

 Fan is not a cannibal from sacrificial motives. 

 He does it in his common-sense way. Man's 

 flesh, he says, is good to eat, very good, and he 

 wishes you would try it. Oh dear no, he never 

 eats it himself, but the next-door town does. 

 He is always very much abused for eating his 

 relations, but he really does not do this. He 

 will eat his next-door neighbour's relations and 

 sell his own deceased to his next-door neighbour 

 in return; but he does not buy slaves and fatten 

 them up for his table, as some of the Middle 

 Congo tribes do. He has no slaves, no prisoners 

 of war, no cemeteries, so you must draw your own conclusions." 



Photo by Richard huchla. 



A DINKA GIRL (FULL-FACE). 



c. THE NILOTIC NEGROES. 



IN the basin of the Upper Nile, between Fashoda on the north and the Uganda Protectorate 

 and the Congo Free State on the south, dwell a series of Negro tribes who have been included 

 as the Nilotic group. They were originally regarded, from the supposed characters of their 

 language, as allied to the Fulah of the West Soudan and to some Nubian tribes. These races 

 were, therefore, once associated as the Nubar-Fulah group. But Professor Keane has proved 

 that the physical characters of the people as well as their speech show that this association 

 was artificial, and the old group has been dismembered. 



The only close allies of these Upper Nile Negroes outside the Nile Basin live in British 

 East Africa. They are the Masai, Njempsians, and their allies, and the people of Kavirondo, on 

 the north-east side of the Victoria Nyanza. 



The Nilotic tribes may be considered in four groups: (1) the peoples of the Bahr-el- 

 Ghazl, including the Dinka, Dyur, and Bongo; (2) those of the main Nile Valley and its 



