K 
o18 REPORT—1905. 
are not so mueh rain-makers, as makers of talismans, amulets, philtres, and charms 
to attract the game and to ensure its capture. The mysterious depths of the forest, 
in the impenetrable thickets of which death may lurk at each step, and the isola- 
tion which results in social disorganisation, incline the hunter to superstitious 
terrors. Pasturage is governed by natural impersonal forces, but huuting is 
individual and personal. Further, associated with the mobile pastoral life of the 
Bantu is the patriarchal system of family life, respect and veneration for old age, 
and the autocracy of the chief; no wonder, then, that ancestor-worship has 
developed, or that it is the chief factor in the religious life of these people, and has 
to a variable degree replaced the antecedent totemism. 
As I have previously indicated, there is evidence of the former extension to 
the north of the Hottentots and the Bushmen, they having gradually been pressed 
first southwards and then inte the steppes and deserts of South Africa by the 
southerly drifting of the Bantu. 
The mixture of Hamite with Negro, which gave rise to the primitive Bantu stock, 
may have originated somewhere to the east or north-east of the Victoria Nyanza. 
A factor of great importance in the evolution of the Bantu is to be found in 
the great diversity of climate and soil in Equatorial Kast Africa. It is a country 
of small plateaus separated by gorges, or low-lying lands, The small plateaus are 
suitable for pasturage, but their extent is limited; thus they fell to the lot of the 
more yigorous people, while the conquered had to content themselves with low 
country, and were obliged to hunt or cultivate the land. In these healthy high- 
lands the people multiplied, and migration became necessary ; the stronger and 
bette:-organised groups retained their flocks and migrated in a southerly direction, 
keeping to the savannas and open country, the line of least resistance being indicated 
by the relative social feebleness of the peoples to the south. In the small plateaus 
a nomadic life is impossible for the herders, there being at most a seasonal change 
of pasturage ; this prevents the possession of large herds and necessitates a certain 
amount of tillage; further, it would seem that this mode of life tends to develop 
military organisation and a tribal system. 
No materials at present exist for any attempt at a history of this stage of the 
Bantu expansion, but from what we know of the great folk-wauderings in South 
Africa during the firsthalf of the nineteenth*century, and of the effects of the 
southerly migration of the Masai, we can form some estimate of what may have 
happened earlier in Equatorial Africa. : 
Lichtenstein lived among the Be-Chuana in 1805, and from that date begins 
our knowledge of the Bantu peoples. Dr. G. M. Theal, the learned historian 
of South Africa, Dr. K. Barthel, and Mr. G. W. Stow, whose vaiuable book has 
just appeared, have made most careful studies of folk-wanderings in South Africa, 
based upon the records of the explorers of the past hundred years; we scarcely 
have trustworthy accounts of the movements of the various tribes for a longer 
period, and oral traditions of the natives, though in the main correct, require 
careful handling. The nature of the country is such that it affords more than 
ordinary facilities for migrations, and the general absence of great geographical 
barriers prevents ethnical differentiation. 
The Bantu peoples of Southern Africa may conveniently be classified in three 
main groups :— 
(1) The Eastern tribes, composed of the Ama-Zulu, Ama-Xosa, &e, 
(2) The Central tribes, consisting of the Be-Chuana, Ba-Suto, Ma-Shona, &e. 
(8) The Western tribes, such as the Ova-Mpo and Ova-Herero, 
(1) The Ama-Zulu and Ama-Xosa are respectively the‘ northern and southern 
branches of a migration down the east coast, that, according to some authorities, 
took place about the fifteenth century. {The Ama-Xosa never overstepped the 
Drakensberg range, but there have been northerly, and more especially southerly 
movements; the Ama-Xosa, for example, extended, about 1800, as far as Kaaimans 
River, Mossel Bay, but in 1835 they were pressed back by the colonists to the 
Great Fish River. ’ 
The Ama-Zulu have occupied the east coast, north of the Tugela, for a long period, 
