460 APPENDIX IL 



of the Bahr-el-Jebel, the Bongo (Dor), Eol, and K^rej of the western affluents of the 

 White Nile, the Funj of Senaar, and the Shilluks and Dinkas about the Sobat con- 

 fluence. The most numerous and widespread are the Zandeh, the eastern portion of 

 wliose territory has alone been explored. They are divided into several independent 

 states, stretching from the Bahr-el-Jebel half across the continent, probably to the 

 territory of the Fans in the far West. 



Of the reduced nations, the Shilluks and Dinkas are by far the most important. 

 The Shilluks appear to be of the same stock as the Funj of Senaar, who by fusion 

 with the Arabs formed a powerful kingdom, which in the last century extended 

 northwards beyond the Atbara confluence. Of the Dinkas, who number several millions, 

 as many as twenty -five distinct tribes are mentioned by D. G. Beltrame,* who has resided 

 several years amongst the native communities of the White Nile. 



Although grouped as Negroes proper, very few of these Nilotic peoples present 

 the ideal type of the Blacks, such as we find it amongst the Ashantis and other 

 inhabitants of Upper Guinea. The complexion is in general less black, the nose 

 less flat, the lips less protruding, the hair less woolly, the dolichocephaly and prog- 

 nathism less marked — in a word, the salient features of the Negro race less prominent 

 than elsewhere. Apart from the more minute shades of transition due to diverse 

 intermingling with the Hamites and Semites,! two distinct types may be plainly 

 distinguished — one black and long-headed (ShiUuk, Dinka, Nuer, Mittu), the other 

 reddish or ruddy brown and short-headed (Bongo, Zandeh, &c.). The complexion of 

 the latter may possibly be due to the properties of the red earth prevalent in their 

 districts.^ But no theory has been advanced to account for their brachycephaly, which 

 is all the more difficult to explain, inasmuch as it is characteristic neither of the 

 aboriginal Negro, nor of the intruding Hamite and Semite elements. 



Schweinfurth teUs us that the Bongos are " hardly removed from the lowest grade 

 of brachycephaly" {op. cit. i., 263), and the same is largely true of the Zandeh. But 

 this feature apjjears to be altogether far more general amongst the Negro races than 

 is usually supposed. Of the eighteen skulls from Equatorial Africa in the Barnard 

 Davis Collection (now in the museum of the College of Surgeons, London), as many 

 as four are distinctly round-headed. Craniology thus fails in Negroland, as it does 

 in so many other regions, as a constant factor in determining racial types. 



The Nilotic races appear to form a connecting link between those of Baghirmi in 

 the Tsad basin, and the non-Bantu peoples between the Kilima-Njaro highlands and the 

 east side of the Victoria Nyanza, who have been recently visited by the Rev. T. Wake- 

 field and Mr. Thomson. The Wa-Kavirondo nation of this region are allied in speech 

 to the Shilluks and the Yambu of the Sobat Valley. § The language of their neighbours, 

 the Oigob (Masai), also presents a remarkable peculiarity in the presence of grammatical 

 gender, which it has in common with all the dialects of the Nilotic Negroes, except the 

 Dinka. || This point is of great philological interest, grammatical gender being a feature 

 hitherto supposed to be restricted to the three inflecting families (Aryan, Semitic, and 

 Hamitic), besides the Hottentot, by Lepsius, partly on this ground, affiliated to the 

 Hamitic. In Oigob gender, represented by I masculine, and n feminine, is fully 

 developed. Thus : ol =: he, that man ; il z= those men ; en, eng = she ; ing = those 

 women ; el-e = this man ; en-a =: this woman ; with which compare the Bari : lo ■=^ this 

 man ; na =: this woman ; the Bongo : hah = he ; hoh == she ; and the ShiUuk : nenno = 

 he ; ndno z= she. Lepsius, however, is inclined to regard the so-called gender particles 



* " Grammatica e Vocabolario della lingua Denka," Rome, 1880, p. 231. 



t In Senaar alone the Arabs reckon as many as six gradations between the pure Negro and the 

 Semite : 1. El-Asraf, or yellow ; 2. El-Kat Fatalobin, the Abyssinian ; 3. El-Akdar, or red ; 4. El- 

 Aziaq, or blue ; 5. El-Ahsdar, or "green" ; 6. Ahbit, the Nubian. 



+ Schweinfurth, " Heart of Africa." 



§ Rev. T. "Wakefield, in "Proceedings of the Geographical Society," for December, 1882. 



II Lep.sius, " Eiiileitung." 



