16 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Assistant District Commissioners Eainey and Vergette ; District Commissioner 

 Sangster, of the Gambia Colony; and Captain Foulkes, Political Eesident, 

 Northern Nigeria. 



History. 



The Sahai'a is one of the most ancient known habitations of the human 

 species. In the northern Sahara, especially in the calcareous deposits of dried 

 springs, the traces of a formerly richer flora, and, above all, the remains of 

 human settlements in regions now completely uninhabited, speak only too 

 clear a language, and assure us that even the deficiency of water in the 

 Algeria of to-day as compared with that of Eoman times is not to be referred 

 merely to the decay of artificial irrigation, but must have definite causes. 

 Everywhere the soil yields flint arrow-heads — an undeniable proof of the 

 existence of a large population which found a climate favourable to life in a 

 region which to-day seems devoted to eternal sterility. 



Looking back through the mists that precede the dawn of history, we see 

 faintly a people that lived by hunting, and worked immense quantities of 

 flints, which we now find in the drifting sands which form the soil of the 

 Sahara. These flints, sometimes brought by caravans to the south, are found 

 in quite isolated and now uninhabited parts of the desert, and are much worn 

 by the action of the sand ; but still their character indicates a people in the 

 Palaeolithic stage. Here in this great vastness of what to-day is sterile, 

 drifting aridity, the white sands shimmeriug with heat under a merciless sun. 

 Palaeolithic man found a climate moist and cool, and a country fertile enough 

 to support an immense population.' These were a pre-Libyan people who, as 

 the stock grew and increased in their primitive home, became the Medi- 

 terranean race of Sergi, and sent forth waves of migration which, although 

 acted upon by opposing races and differing environments, still retain traces of 

 their original unity. From this stock have sprung such widely different 

 peoples as the primitive Cretans, Semites, and Egyptians, the Gala, Somali, 

 Nubians, Ethiopians ; and on the other side the Fullas and the earliest Iberian 

 waves. The Egyptians in the hot valley of the Nile became a deeper brown, 

 or red as they call themselves, than their ancestors ; but still there is a 

 marked contrast between all these races and the Nilotic or Negroid races, both 

 in physical characteristics and in the language. The Hamitic Gala and 

 Somali languages are distinctly related to the Libyan, ancient Egyptian, and 

 Semitic, and have no connexion with the Nilotic or the Negro languages. The 

 physical type of all is distinctly Caucasian, with features of an Egyptian cast, 



' For similar conditions in Central Asia see " Sand-buried Euins of Khotan," by Dr. M. A. Stein, 

 and the records of the Pumpelly Expedition. 



