chap, xviil] TRIBES OF CENTRAL AFRICA. 
481 
my depth. The natives not only are ignorant of 
writing, but they are without traditions—their thoughts 
are as entirely engrossed by their daily wants as those 
of animals; thus there is no clue to the distant past; 
history has no existence. This is much to be deplored, 
as peculiarities are specific in the type of several tribes 
both in physical appearance and in language. The 
Dinka; Bari; Latooka; Madi; and Unyoro or Kit- 
wara, are distinct languages on the east of the Nile, 
comprising an extent of country from about 12° north 
to the Equator. The Makkarika have also a distinct 
language, and I was informed in Kamrasis country, 
that the Mallegga, on the west of the Albert lake, 
speak a different tongue to that of Kitwara (or Unyoro) 
—this may possibly be the same as the Makkarika, 
of which I have had no experience by comparison. 
Accepting the fact of five distinct languages from the 
Equator to 12° N. lat., it would appear by analogy that 
Central Africa is divided into numerous countries and 
tribes, distinct from each other in language and phy¬ 
sical conformation, whose origin is perfectly obscure. 
Whether the man of Central Africa be pre-Adamite is 
impossible to determine; but the idea is suggested by 
the following data. The historical origin of man, or 
Adam, commences with a knowledge of God. Through¬ 
out the history of the world from the creation of Adam, 
God is connected with mankind in every creed, whether 
worshipped as the universal sublime spirit of omni¬ 
potence, or shaped by the forms of idolatry into repre¬ 
sentations of a deity. From the creation of Adam, 
mankind has acknowledged its inferiority, and must 
bow down and worship either the true God or .a graven 
image; or something that is in heaven or in earth. 
The world, as we accept that term, was always actu¬ 
ated by a natural religious instinct. Cut off from that 
world, lost in the mysterious distance that shrouded 
the origin of the Egyptian Nile, were races unknown, 
that had never reckoned in the great sum of history—- 
races that we have brought to light, whose existence 
