516 REPORT—1905. 
The main physical characteristics of the true Negro are: ‘black’ skin, woolly 
hair, tall stature, averaging about 1.730 m. (5 ft. 8 in.), moderate dolichocephaly, 
with an average cephalic index of 74-75 ; flat, broad nose, thick and often everted 
lips, frequent prognathism. 
West African culture contains some characteristic features. The natives build 
gable-roofed huts; their weapons include spears with socketed heads, bows taper- 
ing at each end with bowstrings of vegetable products, swords and plaited shields, 
but no clubs or slings. Among the musical instruments are wocden drums and a 
peculiar form of guitar, in which each string has its own support. Clothing is of 
bark-cloth and palm-fibre, and there is a notable preponderance of vegetable orna- 
ments. Circumcision is common and the knocking out of the upper incisors. 
With regard to religion, there is a great development of fetishism and incipient 
-polytheistic systems. Colonel Ellis has proved in a masterly manner the gradual 
evolution of religion from west to east along the Guinea Coast, and this is 
associated with an analogous progress in the laws of descent and succession to 
property, and in the rise of government. He further suggests that differences in 
the physical character of each country in question have played a great part in this 
progressive evolution. Here also are to be found secret societies, masks and 
representations of human figures. The ordeal by poison is employed, chiefly for 
the discovery of witchcraft ; anthropophagy occurs. The domestic animals are the 
dog, goat, pig, and hen. Cattle are absent owing to the tsetse fly, The plants 
originally cultivated were beans, gourds, bananas, and perhaps earth-nuts. Coiled 
basketry and head-rests are absent. 4 
That branch of the true Negro stock which spake the mother-tongue of the 
Bantu languages some 3,000 years ago (according to Sir Harry Johnston’s estimate) 
spread over the area of what is now Uganda and British East Africa. In the Nile 
valley these people probably mixed with Negrilloes, and possibly with the most 
northerly representatives of the Bushmen in the high lands to the east. Here 
also they came into contact with Hamitic peoples coming down from the north, and 
their amalgamation constituted a new breed of Negro—the Bantu. We have already 
seen what are some of the more important physical characteristics of the Negro, 
Negrillo, and Bushman stocks; it only remains to note in what particulars they 
were modified by the new blood. 
Hamites. 
The Hamites are usually regarded as the true indigenous element in North 
Africa, from Morocco to Somaliland. Two main divisions of this stock are 
generally recognised : (1) the Northern or Western Hamites (or Mediterranean Race 
of some authors), of which the purest examples are perhaps to be found among 
the Berbers; and (2) the Eastern Hamites or Ethiopians. These two groups 
shade into each other, and in most places a Negro admixture has taken place to 
a variable extent since very early times. Perhaps these two groups should be 
entirely separated ; the first may be allocated to the Mediterranean Race, and the 
second may be regarded as a mixture of Semite and Negro, to which the term 
-Hamite might with advantage be restricted. The ‘ Hamites’ are characterised by 
a skin-colour that varies considerably, being white in the west and various shades 
of coffee-brown, red-brown, or chocolate in the east; the hair is naturally straight 
or curly, but usually frizzly in the east. The stature is medium or tall, averaging 
about 1.670m. (5 ft. 53 in.) to about 1.708 m. (5 ft. 74 in.); the head is sub- 
dolichocephalic (75-78) ; the face is elongated and the profile not prognathous ; 
the nose prominent, thin, straight, or aquiline, with narrow nostrils; lips thin or 
slightly tumid, never everted. 
Bantu. 
Roughly speaking, the whole of Africa south of the equator, with the ex- 
ception of the dwindling Bushman and Hottentot elements, is inhabited by 
Bantu-speaking peoples, who are extremely heterogeneous, but who exhibit 
