April 26, 1877 



NATURE 



551 



family. Whatever be their origin, all the countless 

 ribes here settled are now at least linguistically united 

 into one group, all of them, with the exceptions already 

 specified, apparently speaking dialects of some one 

 common mother tongue now extinct. Hence however 

 interesting the questions that still remain to be settled 

 relating to the physical geography of Africa south of the 

 equator, its ethnography, so far as that can be determined 

 by the test of language, presents little or no further diffi- 

 culty. 



But north of the equator the case is completely reversed. 

 Here there doubtless remain to be cleared up some few 

 geographical points, such, for instance, as the water part- 

 ing of the White Nile and Lake Chad, the course of the 

 Upper Shari, and especially that of the Ogoway, so far as 

 it may flow north of the line. But on the whole the main 

 physical features of this half of the continent may be said 

 to be at last fairly settled. 



Its ethnology, on the contrary, only becomes all the 

 more complicated in proportion as our knowledge of the 

 land and its peoples increases.^ No doubt we have here 

 also one or two widespread linguistic groups, such as the 

 Semitic, represented by two of its branches — the Arabic 

 in the Barbary States and Egypt, and the Himyaritic 

 (Lesana Gez, Tigrd, and Amharic) in Abyssinia. There 

 is also the great Hamitic family, with its three distinct 

 branches — Egyptian, Libyan, and Ethiopic — occupying 

 more than one half of the Sahara, from about the 15° E. 

 long, to the Atlantic seaboard, large tracts in the south 

 of the Barbary States, parts of Egypt and Nubia, and the 

 whole of the Galla country and Somaliland as far south 

 as the River Dana or Pocomo, where it is met by the 

 Waswahili and other Bantu tribes of the eastern sea- 

 board. 



But there still remains the pure negro race, properly so- 

 called, occupying nearly the whole of the Sudan in its 

 widest sense, the banks of the White Nile, and all its 

 head streams, from Khartum to the Victoria Nile, and in 

 all probability the still unexplored regions of the Ogoway, 

 and of Central equatorial Africa generally, from Cape 

 Lopez inland, to the Blue Mountains west of the Albert 

 Nyanza, and from Lake Chad southwards to the equator. 

 Here we find innumerable negro tribes, dwelling more 

 especially in three great centres of population— the region 

 between the Niger and the West Coast, the Basin of the 

 Chad, and the Upper Nile, with all its head streams « 

 — tribes generally speaking differing as much in speech as 

 they would seem on the whole to resemble each other in 

 their main physical features. Here live the Wolofs, the 

 Veis, the numerous Mandenga and Haussa peoples, the 

 Fulahs (who, however, are not Negroes), the Masa family, 

 the Bagirmi, Babir, Nyamnyam, Shilluk, and many other 

 Niger, Gambia, Chad, and Nilotic races, all speaking 

 idioms seemingly in no way related to each other, and in 

 fact possessing nothing in common with any known forms 

 of speech beyond the general and somewhat vague 

 feature of agglutination characteristic of most, if not of 

 all, of them. Here, therefore, we have many linguistic and 

 ethnological puzzles still awaiting solution, and forming, 

 as stated, the counterpart of the topographical mysteries 

 now being so successfully unveiled in the southern half of 

 the continent. 



The Basin of Lake Chad, situated in the very heart of 

 this vast region, is peopled by such a bewildering number 



I A striking proof of this is afforded by the recent expedition of Dr. W. 

 Junker along the Lower Sobat from its junction with the White Nile to 

 Nasser, the most advanced Egyptian military station m that direction. He 

 informs us that between these two points are spoken no less than five distinct 

 idioms, some of which are now heard of for the first time. These would seem 

 to be the Nuer, along the right bank of the Sobat, and the Shilluk, Janghey, 

 Kallangh, and Nuiak on the left. And beyond Nasser he reports the exist- 

 ence of many other independent tribes on the Middle and Upper Sobat, such 

 as the Bonjak, Jibbe, Kunkung, Nikuar, and Chai, all apparently speaking 

 different languages. , ,,„,.. -^i-i 



=> Reporting last year to the Egyptian Government on the White Nile 

 between Duffli and Magungo, Gen. Gordon Pasha remarks : _Le pays 

 est tres peuple : beaucoup plus qu'aucune autre partie de 1 Atrique. 



of races, as to have hitherto bafifled all attempts at analysis, 

 or any general classification based on recognised scien- 

 tific principles. Here we find dwelling either seoarately 

 or together, branches of the Semite, Hamite, Fulah, and 

 Haussa races, though none of them, except the Semite 

 Arabs, in any considerable numbers. Here is further re- 

 presented every variety of the mysterious Tibu people, 

 who elsewhere share the Great Desert with the Twareg 

 (Tuareg) Berbers — Teda and Dasa, that is, northern and 

 southern Tibus, Tibus pure and mixed, nomad and 

 settled. Here also are the Kanembu,^ or people of 

 Kanem, who are Tibus one degree removed, and the 

 Kanuri or Magomi, the ruling race in Bornu, who may 

 be described as Tibus, or rather Kanembu, in the third 

 and fourth degree, in other words, half-caste descendants 

 of Kanembu and the Aboriginal Negro inhabitants of the 

 land. Here are, moreover, the Margi, Mandara, Makari, 

 Logon, and other members of the Masa or Mosgu family, 

 in all probability akin to, if not the collateral descendants 

 of, the So or Sou people, now either extinct or absorbed in 

 the Tara, Manga, Ngalmaduko, Dalatoa, and other 

 Kanuri tribes. Here, too, are the Bede, Babir, and some 

 other independent or unclassified Negro peoples, frag- 

 ments of the Kuka and Bulala from Lake Fittri, and 

 lastly, the Bagirmi from the neighbourhood of the Middle 

 Shari, and apparently connected with the Jur and Dor 

 tribes on the western head waters of the White Nile, thus 

 forming a sort of connecting link between the Nilotic 

 Negro tribes, and those of Central Sudan, 



All or most of these data were doubtless previously 

 known, at least in a vague or general way ; but thanks to 

 Dr. Nachtigal's careful investigations on the spot, we are 

 now for the first time enabled to form a clear idea of the 

 various geographical, political, social, and linguistic rela- 

 tions of these different peoples, one to the other. Unfor- 

 tunately in his elaborate monograph he treats the whole 

 subject under the threefold division of races in Kanem, 

 Bornu, and the lake islands, a political rather than an 

 ethnographic distribution, which is all the more confusing 

 that several Kanembu tribes, such as the Sugurti and 

 Tomagheri, are now settled also in Bornu, while on the 

 other hand several Bornu or Kanuri people, such as the 

 Magomi of Fuli on the east coast, the Bulua, Malemia, 

 and Ngalma Dukko, have found their way back to 

 Kanem, whence their forefathers originally migrated 

 westwards. 



The inconvenience, however, arising out of this ar- 

 rangement of the subject matter is largely obviated by 

 the excellent coloured map accompanying the paper, 

 without which it would in fact be scarcely intelligible to 

 the ordinary reader. It will therefore be necessary in the 

 subjoined resume of Nachtigal's conclusions to depart 

 somewhat from his triple division, and give a general 

 classification of all the Chad races, based rather on their 

 permanent linguistic and physical affinities than on their 

 accidental political relations, while in all other respects 

 closely adhering to the data supplied by him. 



The map above referred to is shaded in ten different 

 colours, corresponding to so many distinct peoples. But 

 one of these colours comprises four not yet classified 

 Negro tribes on the west and south-west frontier of Bornu, 

 between that state and the adjoining Haussa states 

 further west. On the other hand, the Bagirmi are not 

 represented at all by any of these colours, so that four 

 more shades would really be needed to embrace all the 

 Chad races, while even then excluding such more remote 

 peoples as the Adamawa on the south-west and the 

 Fulahs on the west. 



It thus appears that all the peoples dwelling either 

 round about the Chad or on its numerous islands may be 

 grouped under the subjoined fourteen main divisions :— 

 (i) Tibus (Teda, Dasa, and Kojam) ; (2) Kanembu; 



» The suffix Im is simply the plural of the personal suffix ma : Kancmma 

 = a native of Kanem ; Kanembu — the people of Kanem. 



