Liberia *- 



a people of the High Sudan, driven south into and through 

 the Liberian forests by some race movement at the back due 

 to Mandingo or Kula conquests. 



The Kp-ict'si tribes sometimes exhibit men and women with 

 disproportionately short legs ; but the sections of this people 

 on the north and north-west (the Buzi, for example) have 

 evidently mingled with superior races. They speak a Kpwesi 

 dialect, but the}' are people of well-proportioned, even graceful 

 bodies, the skin colour is yellow-brown, the head hair is rather 

 long, and the facial features are refined. The races in the east 

 ot Liberia, south ot the Mandingo and northwards of the 

 Kru tribes, are, according to the French explorers, a better- 

 looking race than the Kru people, with legs that are neither 

 disproportionately long nor short. Mr. Sim states that in the 

 Nidi or Niete section of the Sapo people, north of the 

 Niete Mountains near the Duobe River, the women are taller 

 than the men "an average 5 feet 8 inrhes ; a good number 

 over 6 feet in height ; all of them well-proportioned. . . . 

 The men of this tribe, though not so tall as their women, arc 

 well-built with handsome figures." 



i\i uwe:i offer considerable variation in proguathhm ; some 

 have retreating foreheads, wide cheek- bones and the muzzles 

 of apes ; others again will exhibit a cast of feature that is 

 almost comely, even from the Kurrpean point of view. In 

 some the nose is depressed and very broad at the tip, with 

 raised and fleshy aLv. Others again exhibit the pug nose ot 

 a monkey, with scarcely any bridge, but a nose which never- 

 theless is somewhat small at the tip, with no very marked fleshy 

 development of the nostrils. 



The (fj/ottr fjf the skin ranges from a golden-yellow in some 

 Mandingo. Vai, and Kpwesi to a deep black in certain Kru 

 types. ' The Mandingo offer very varying types in this respect, 



93* 



