SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 107 



which they are advanced is to prove that because the Hausas exhibit 

 a measure of civilisation they cannot be Negraic. Without entering 

 into a detailed academic discussion of any of these theories, it may 

 be remarked, in a general way, that there are differences in physical 

 characters among negro as among European nations. Even in the 

 matter of colour there are degrees of blackness among negroes, even 

 of the same nation or the same family, just as there are degrees of 

 whiteness among Caucasians, even of the same nation or the same 

 family. The degree of a negro's blackness is purely a question of 

 the amount of the melanin deposit in the layers of his skin. As to 

 one nation of a race being more advanced than another, that is so 

 ordinary a phenomenon, even in Europe, that one wonders at the ex- 

 travagant, if not irrelevant, conclusions that anthropology attempts to 

 draw from it when it appears in Africa. Do not Great Britain, 

 France, Germany and the United States to-day lead the white world ? 

 Does not Japan lead the yellow world ? And why should not Songhay, 

 Hausa and Bornou have led the black world in the long ago without 

 it being therefore assumed that they were of some different stock ? 

 Nations and countries that abut on the world's highways benefit from 

 contact with other nations and countries, and nations in contact re- 

 flect the culture of the nations with which they have been in contact. 

 Koman culture is reflected in these islands still. What wonder if 

 North African culture be reflected in Hausa ? 



4. THE EASTERN ORIGIN THEORY. 



The point is often strained that the Hausas themselves have a 

 tradition of having migrated from the East. So indeed they have. 

 But what nation has not a similar tradition? Nearly every West 

 African nation has it. This claim to an Eastern origin made in the 

 Hausa tradition, considered along with other similar claims made by 

 nearly every nation on earth, should be regarded as furnishing another 

 consideration (that of universal consent) strongly favouring the truth 

 of the great law of the migrations of peoples which draws them from 

 the land of the rising to that of the setting sun. Discarding mere 



