PROSPECTS OF E. EQUATORIAL AFRICA. 537 
habitants of Africa from the Victoria Nyanza to the 
Cape and Fernando Po to Mombasa, with very few 
exceptions. There are also Grallas on the north be¬ 
tween the Sabaki and the Dana rivers, a few invading 
Somalis in the same district, Arabs of pure blood and 
Arab hybrids of every degree throughout the length 
of the littoral, and about four thousand Banyans and 
other natives of British India who come there to trade 
and sometimes to settle. To add to this medley of 
races, there are remains here and there of ancient 
Persian and Portuguese colonization, but, as I have 
before said, the bulk of the coast population is Bantu- 
negro, a stock which seems to absorb and assimilate 
easily most foreign strains. The lingua-franca spoken 
is the celebrated Swahili language, one of the Bantu 
tongues, which promises to be the French of Eastern 
Africa. 
On penetrating inland from the coast, the country 
is for the first hundred miles, as a rule, very thinly 
inhabited, except on certain mountainous districts, or 
along the coast of the Buvu, the Sabaki, or the Tana 
rivers, and what people there are belong to the Bantu 
stock, and speak languages related to Swahili. When¬ 
ever you meet with people speaking Bantu languages 
in this part of Africa, you find they are invariably 
settled agriculturists, and never nomads. As a con¬ 
trast to them, may now be mentioned the celebrated 
Masai, a negro race of splendid physical development. 
The Masai are semi-nomads, that is to say, each tribe 
has its home country wherein the married men and 
women settle, and move about within a circumscribed 
radius, while the warriors, who are forced to remain 
unmarried, range over immense areas, for the sake of 
plunder. These people were once, and are still in a 
