= = 
A WEEKLY. ILLUSTRATED JOURNAL OF SC 
“To the solid ground 
Of Nature trusts the mind which builds for aye.’-—Worpswortn. 
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 10916. 
THE PEOPLES AND LANGUAGES OF 
SIERRA LEONE. 
Anthropological Report on Sierra Leone. By 
Northcote W. Thomas. Part i., Law and 
Custom of the Timne and other Tribes. Pp. 
196. Part ii., Timne-English Dictionary. Pp. 
vili+139. Part iii, Timne Grammar and 
Stories. Pp. xxx +86. 
Specimens of Languages from Sierra Leone. By 
Northcote W. Thomas. Pp. 62. (London: 
Harrison and Sons, 1916.) 
R. NORTHCOTE THOMAS, employed for 
a number of years as Government Ethnolo- 
gist in Southern Nigeria, was transferred recently 
to the Sierra Leone colony and protectorate to 
serve there in a like capacity. The first results 
of his work have now been published by the 
Crown Agents for the Colonies, and will not dis- 
‘appoint those whose expectations have been 
already raised over the remarkable research work 
conducted by Mr. Thomas amongst the tribes of 
Southern Nigeria—in which direction, be it ob- 
served, he revealed much that was new and in- 
teresting regarding the Semi-Bantu languages of 
the Upper Cross River basin. 
Sierra Leone is a British possession of some 
30,000 square miles in area, but, like the adjoining 
regions of Liberia and French and Portuguese 
Guinea, its interest is not measured by the square 
mile. All this portion of (originally densely 
forested) West Africa has been the refuge of 
oppressed tribes driven out of the interior pasture- 
lands, and also the goal of negroid, cattle-keeping 
tribes of the mountainous regions of Senegambia, 
who have been drawn coastwards by the attrac- 
tion of the sea and its salt, and the commerce 
brought by European ships, perhaps from the days 
of the Carthaginians onwards. One feature 
amongst many others makes this region of Guinea 
singularly interesting to those who are exploring 
African ethnology, and that is the presence there 
of Semi-Bantu languages. We are already much 
NO. 2445, VOL. 98] 
has placed at our disposal regarding the Semi- 
| Bantu speech forms of the Upper Cross River. 
The writer of this review, moreover, has. received 
of late invaluable information regarding the Semi- 
Bantu languages of Eastern Nigeria, first 
revealed, like so much else in African linguistics, 
by Koelle’s vocabularies. (Mr. Thomas, it should 
be remarked, both in the works under review and 
in those alluded to on Southern Nigeria, has 
always done full justice to Sigismund Koelle, an 
Anglican missionary of the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, whose “ Polyglotta Africana” has 
only of late received the full appreciation it de- 
serves from students of African languages.) The 
Semi-Bantu languages are represented at the 
present day by small and scattered groups in the 
Bauchi hills and in the Middle Benue basin 
(Eastern Nigeria), in the Kaduna region of Central 
| Nigeria, in a small portion of Togoland, in Sierra 
Leone and in Portuguese Guinea, and near the 
Upper Gambia, and, so far as we are aware, 
nowhere else. The affinities between each of 
these groups is indubitable when a comparative 
study is made, as also their inherent affinity with 
Bantu speech both in syntax and word-roots. 
Two groups of these Semi-Bantu languages 
_ are confined in their area (more or less) to the 
| extensions 
Sierra Leone colony and protectorate: Bulom, 
originally the dominant speech of the Sierra 
Leone coast line, and Temne (Timne). . The 
Temne people and language are distributed 
over the western part of Sierra Leone, with 
(speaking different dialects) _ into 
French Guinea. At the present day the Bulom 
language is said to be nearly extinct, having been 
swamped by the steady progress towards the 
coast of the Mende tribes (which belong linguisti- 
cally to the Mandingo group). All that we knew 
of Bulom prior to Mr. Thomas’s conscientious 
work was derived from the records of Koelle and 
of Nylander, an Anglican missionary who com- 
piled an imperfect grammar and vocabulary of 
Bulom a hundred years ago. Temne, on the other 
hand, had been illustrated not only by Koelle (who 
alone has dealt with its exceedingly interesting 
B 
