224 NORTH-EAST AFRICA. 



zealous Mohammedan missionaries are making such great progress that in a few 

 years all the Legas will probably have embraced Islam. In the midst of the 

 Legas live a few thousand Denkas, who have sought protection amongst them and 

 work as their slaves. Having no other means of escaping the slave-dealers in the 

 wasted plains of the Sobat and Zal, which they formerly inhabited, they have been 

 obliged to seek refuge in the mountains, offering themselves to the tribes as porters 

 and mercenaries. These Denkas are distinguished from the other tribes by two or 

 three horizontal marks, which they have made on the forehead by means of stalks 

 of cereal plants, bound tightly round the head for several weeks. They do not 

 marry the women of the country, and hence are obliged to practise polyandry, 

 which has become an institution regulated by ceremonies. The capital of the Lega 

 country is the town of Gtimbali, situated at a height of 6,600 feet on one of the 

 upper affluents of the Jabus. Goho, the residence of their high priest, lies farther 

 south at an elevation of 7,530 feet. 



The Bertas. 



The advanced chains west of the Damot Mountains are occupied by numerous 

 Shangalla peoples ; but the most powerful nation is that inhabiting the two 

 valleys of the Jabus and Tumat, tributaries of the Blue Nile, and the parting ranges 

 between the two watersheds of the Bahr-el-Azraq and Bahr-el-Abiad, These 

 Bertas, of Negro stock, who are said to number about 80,000, and whom the 

 Arabs usually term Jebalaïn, or "mountaineers," a name also applied to other 

 peoples, have kinky hair, pouting lips, and the face flat, although less so than that 

 of their "West African congeners. However, the figure is well-proportioned, the 

 limbs supple and strong ; and the Berta warrior, armed with lance and shield, 

 presents a commanding appearance. The women adorn the face by passing a 

 silver or copper ring through the nostrils, and an iron one through the upper lobe 

 of the left ear. The young men fasten the tusks of boars to their temples or necks, 

 and on grand occasions both men and women paint the body red, like the Bâri 

 warriors. The women of some tribes tattoo the face in such a fashion as to produce 

 numerous little pustules like those of small-pox. The warriors of other tribes 

 expose the epidermis so as to produce very elegant arabesque designs ; but their 

 customs allow those warriors alone who have cut off one or more heads to tattoo 

 themselves in this way. The Bertas, like all the other Negro peoples of the Blue 

 Nile, consist exclusively of agriculturists, which is the principal cause of their 

 contrast with the Negroes of the White Nile, who are all cattle-breeders. The 

 language of the Bertas belongs to the same family as that of the Shiluks, Nuers, 

 and Denkas ; but since their country has been brought within the Mohammedan 

 circle of attraction, first by the Egyptian conquest and then by the general 

 development of the Nilotic populations, Arabic has become the cultivated language. 

 The villages are administered, and the chief of the tribe chosen, by the Arabs. 

 In each independent village resides an Arab merchant acting as a consul for the 

 protection of his fellow-countrymen, and thanks to him the stranger is received 



