May 19, 1904] 



NA TURE 



57 



of Good Hope and touched at the coast of south-east 

 Africa, they found Arabs or Arab half-castes trading 

 there, and learning that these called the black natives 

 of the country " Kafirs," they adopted this term hence- 

 forth as the designation of the Bantu coast races of 

 southern Africa, and passed on this word to the Dutch, 

 who handed it over to the English. Mr. Kidd, by 

 his excellent and detailed description of Kafir customs, 

 myths, folklore, songs, dances, and implements, shows 

 how inseparable these people are in classification from 

 the Negro races of tropical Africa. This deduction 

 is in varying degrees affected by an examination of 

 South African Bantu languages. Of this subject Mr. 

 Kidd does not treat at any length, but it might be 

 mentioned that a careful study of such linguistic works 

 as those of the late Dr. Bleek brings out the following 

 points : — 



A study of the existing languages of the Ova-herero 

 of south-west .Africa, of the many Bechuana tribes of 

 central South Africa, and the languages of the Zulu- 

 Kafirs from Cape Colony on the west and south to 

 the Portuguese district of Inhambane (Nyambane) 

 shows that there is fundamentally a common though 

 remote parentage to these languages so far as the 

 vocabulary and grammatical structure are concerned ; 

 that is to say, that there is more evidence of inter- 

 relationship between these three groups than there is 

 between any one of them and the Bantu languages to 

 the north and north-east. But there are still very 

 striking differences in phonology between the Herero, 

 Bechuana, and Zulu groups, showing that the history 

 and wanderings of each section must have differed 

 considerably. The Bechuana languages are the most 

 altered from the original Bantu structure, but they 

 are without the clicks which seem to give a Hotten- 

 tot aspect to the Zulu dialects, and I believe that 

 very little that is Hottentot can be traced in the 

 etvmologv of the Bechuana vocabulary. But the 

 phonology of this language is so peculiar as to sug- 

 gest its great isolation at one period from other Bantu 

 dialects. Some students of Bantu languages, how- 

 ever, have thought that the Bechuana races may have 

 been the pioneers of the Bantu invasion into the re- 

 gions across the Zambezi. 



Physically speaking, the various sections of the 

 Bechuana people exhibit far more traces of inter- 

 mixture with the Hottentot-Bushmen type than is 

 shown by the Zulu-Kafirs or by the real Herero 

 (Damara) people.' The languages of the Herero 

 group, though they possess marked characteristics in 

 phonology, are of a very pure Bantu type, and gradu- 

 ally link up northwards with the languages of the 

 Congo coast and with the Bantu speech of the 

 southern portions of the Congo basin. The Zulu lan- 

 guage retains some primitive characteristics in the 

 form of the prefixes, which have been changed or lost 

 in the Bechuana or Herero groups. Yet in other 

 respects the Zulu dialects have departed widely from 

 the Bantu standard, especially in vocabulary. This 

 language group is a curious mixture of archaic Bantu 

 features and inexplicable elements which, if not " Non- 

 Bantu," cannot be definitely traced to any known 

 Bantu group of tongues. In a few cases words of 

 this description are of Hottentot origin, but this does 

 not explain many of them, which would appear to 

 have been absolutely invented by the Zulu people, no 

 doubt owing to that strange custom (by no means 

 unknown elsewhere in .-Xfrica), of " hlonipa," by which 

 a constant local change of vocabulary takes place 

 owing to the dislike to mentioning names of_ things 

 which resemble the names of relatives ; so that if there 



the Hill Damaras, wh 

 le northern parts of G^ 



be a prominent person in the tribe, for instance, whose 

 name is actually equivalent to " ox," or even whose 

 name sounds like the word for ox, in that village or 

 community the ox will henceforth be known by a para- 

 phrase or by a substituted word. 



In many respects — as Mr. Kidd's work shows over 

 and over again — the Zulu-Kafir race would seem to have 

 been the last arrived of the Bantu peoples in southern 

 Africa, and to have reached that part of the continent 

 at no very remote period — possibly not more than 

 1,500 to 2,000 years ago. In some of their charac- 

 teristics the Zulus irresistibly recall the manners and 

 customs of such Nilotic-Negro races as the Masai, 

 though there is absolutely no linguistic connection 

 between the two peoples. No doubt this can be ex- 

 plained by assuming that the original Bantu group 

 from which the Zulu sprang had sent several previous 

 branches to invade South .'\frica, which may have 

 been the originators of some of the Zambezi tribes, 

 of the Bechuana and the Herero, and that in this 

 original home, somewhere up in east-central Africa, 

 the Zulu peoples came into contact with Nilotic-Negro 

 races from whom they borrowed customs, arms, and 

 methods of warfare, and with whom they shared 

 religious beliefs. When the Zulus started forth on 

 their southward migration their progress seems to 

 have been a relatively rapid one. We need not be 

 astonished at this when we reflect on the remarkable 

 speed with which a small section of the Zulu people 

 in the first decades of the nineteenth century rushed 

 back into Central .Africa, reaching in their raids and 

 settlements even the vicinity of the Victoria Nyanza. 



The author has much to say of interest on the vexed 

 question of the clicks in Zulu. There are three clicks 

 in this Bantu language— the only Bantu form of 

 speech which possesses these sounds. Some have 

 considered that they were borrowed from the Hotten- 

 tot, but of late there has been a tendency on the part 

 of students like Mr. Dudley Kidd and Miss A. Werner 

 to argue that these modern clicks in Zulu have been 

 separately developed without Hottentot parentage. 

 Mr. Kidd points out that at the present day the clicks 

 subsist far more in the language of the women than 

 in that of the men. It should be noted that amongst 

 the settlements of Zulus in east-central Africa, which 

 are about seventy years old, the clicks are rapidly 

 disappearing. Dr. Bleek pointed out in his linguistic 

 studies that certain strong intercalated aspirates met 

 with in Swahili, and in one or two other East African 

 Bantu dialects were not dissimilar to a vanishing click. 

 The space at my disposal does not permit of my 

 dealing further with the interesting problems raised 

 by this book, which, however, I must repeat, is per- 

 haps quite the best that has yet been written^ or 

 compiled about the Bantu negroes of South Africa. 

 The hundred plates that illustrate this book are all 

 photoErraphs of perfect e.xecution and singular aptness. 

 H. H. Johnston. 



o 



1 Except of course the Hill Damaras, who are a mysterious tribe of 

 mountain people in the northern pans of German South-west Africa— a 

 black race similar in appearance to some of the more degr.ided Negro tribes 

 of West Africa, but speaking a corrupt dialect of Hottentot. 



PROF. E. J. MAREY. 

 F the two veteran Frenchmen who entered on their 

 careers as physiological discoverers half a cen- 

 tury ago, Marev and Chauveau, the first has left us. 

 The second is in full vigour and is at this moment 

 engaged in active laboratory work. 



Marey died on Sunday night after an illness of 

 much suffering. His earliest investigations had for 

 their purpose the devising of methods by which the 

 arterial pulsations could be made to inscribe them- 

 selves on an equably moving surface so asto obtain 

 a graphic record from which their time-relations could 

 be determined. One of the earliest products of these 



NO. 1803, VOL 70] 



