Man, Past and Present Part 13

Socially the Camerun natives stand at nearly the same low level of culture as the neighbouring full-blood Negroes of the Calabar and Niger delta. Indeed the transition in customs and inst.i.tutions, as well as in physical appearance, is scarcely perceptible between the peoples dwelling north and south of the Rio del Rey, here the dividing line between the Negro and Bantu lands. The _Ba-Kish_ of the Meme river, almost last of the Bantus, differ little except in speech from the Negro _Efiks_ of Old Calabar, while witchcraft and other gross superst.i.tions were till lately as rife amongst the Ba-Kwiri and Ba-Kundu tribes of the western Camerun as anywhere in Negroland. It is not long since one of the Ba-Kwiri, found guilty of having eaten a chicken at a missionary's table, was himself eaten by his fellow clansmen. The law of blood for blood was pitilessly enforced, and charges of witchcraft were so frequent that whole villages were depopulated, or abandoned by their terror-stricken inhabitants. The island of Ambas in the inlet of like name remained thus for a time absolutely deserted, "most of the inhabitants having poisoned each other off with their everlasting ordeals, and the few survivors ending by dreading the very air they breathed[286]."

Having thus completed our survey of the Bantu populations from the central dividing line about the Congo-Chad water-parting round by the east, south, and west coastlands, and so back to the Sudanese zone, we may pause to ask, What routes were followed by the Bantus themselves during the long ages required to spread themselves over an area estimated at nearly six million square miles? I have established, apparently on solid grounds, a fixed point of initial dispersion in the extreme north-east, and allusion has frequently been made to migratory movements, some even now going on, generally from east to west, and, on the east side of the continent, from north to south, with here an important but still quite recent reflux from Zululand back nearly to Victoria Nyanza. If a parallel current be postulated as setting on the Atlantic side in prehistoric times from south to north, from Hereroland to the Cameruns, or possibly the other way, we shall have nearly all the factors needed to explain the general dispersion of the Bantu peoples over their vast domain.

Support is given to this view by the curious distribution of the two chief Bantu names of the "Supreme Being," to which incidental reference has already been made. As first pointed out I think by Dr Bleek, _(M)unkulunkulu_ with its numerous variants prevails along the eastern seaboard, _Nzambi_ along the western, and both in many parts of the interior; while here and there the two meet, as if to indicate prehistoric interminglings of two great primeval migratory movements.

From the subjoined table a clear idea may be had of the general distribution:

MUNKULUNKULU NZAMBI

{ Mpondo: Ukulukulu Es.h.i.+-Kongo: Nzambi } { Zulu: Unkulunkulu Kabinda: Nzambi Pongo} { Inhambane: Mulungulu Lunda: Zambi } { Sofala: Murungu Ba-Teke: Nza[~m] } { Be-Chuana: Mulungulu Ba-Rotse: Nyampe } { Lake Moero: Mulungu Bihe: Nzambi } { Lake Tanganyika: Mulungu Loango: Zambi, Nyambi} Eastern { Makua: Moloko Bunda: Onzambi }Western Seaboard{ Quillimane: Mlugu Ba-Ngala: Nsambi }Seaboard and { Lake Bangweolo: Mungu Ba-Kele: Nshambi }and Parts { Tete, Zambesi: Muungu Rungu: Anyambi }Parts of { Nyasaland: Murungu As.h.i.+ra: Aniembie }of Interior{ Swahili: Muungu Mpongwe: Njambi }Interior { Giryama: Mulungu Benga: Anyambi } { Pokomo: Mungo Dwala: Nyambi } { Nyika: Mulungu Yanzi: Nyambi } { Kamba: Mulungu Herero: Ndyambi } { Yanzi: Molongo { Herero: Mukuru

Of _Munkulunkulu_ the primitive idea is clear enough from its best preserved form, the Zulu _Unkulunkulu_, which is a repet.i.tive of the root _inkulu_, great, old, hence a deification of the great departed, a direct outcome of the ancestry-wors.h.i.+p so universal amongst Negro and Bantu peoples[287]. Thus Unkulunkulu becomes the direct progenitor of the Zulu-Xosas: _Unkulunkulu ukobu wetu_. But the fundamental meaning of _Nzambi_ is unknown. The root does not occur in Kis.h.i.+-Kongo, and Bentley rightly rejects Kolbe's far-fetched explanation from the Herero, adding that "the knowledge of G.o.d is most vague, scarcely more than nominal.

There is no wors.h.i.+p paid to G.o.d[288]."

More probable seems W. H. Tooke's suggestion that Nzambi is "a Nature spirit like Zeus or Indra," and that, while the eastern Bantus are ancestor-wors.h.i.+ppers, "the western adherents of Nzambi are more or less Nature-wors.h.i.+ppers. In this respect they appear to approach the Negroes of the Gold, Slave, and Oil Coasts[289]." No doubt the cult of the dead prevails also in this region, but here it is combined with naturalistic forms of belief, as on the Gold Coast, where _Bobowissi_, chief G.o.d of all the southern tribes, is the "Blower of Clouds," the "Rain-maker,"

and on the Slave Coast, where the Dahoman _Mawu_ and the Yoruba _Olorun_ are the Sky or Rain, and the "Owner of the Sky" (the deified Firmament), respectively[290].

It would therefore seem probable that the Munkulunkulu peoples from the north-east gradually spread by the indicated routes over the whole of Bantuland, everywhere imposing their speech, general culture, and ancestor-wors.h.i.+p on the pre-Bantu aborigines, except along the Atlantic coastlands and in parts of the interior. Here the primitive Nature-wors.h.i.+p, embodied in Nzambi, held and still holds its ground, both meeting on equal terms--as shown in the above table--amongst the Ba-Yanzi, the Ova-Herero, and the Be-Chuanas (_Mulungulu_ generally, but _Nyampe_ in Barotseland), and no doubt in other inland regions. But the absolute supremacy of one on the east, and of the other on the west, side of the continent, seems conclusive as to the general streams of migration, while the amazing uniformity of nomenclature is but another ill.u.s.tration of the almost incredible persistence of Bantu speech amongst these mult.i.tudinous illiterate populations for an incalculable period of time[291].

THE VAALPENS AND THE STRANDLOOPERS.

Among the ethnological problems of Africa may be reckoned the _Vaalpens_ and the _Strandloopers_. Along the banks of the Limpopo between the Transvaal and Southern Rhodesia there are scattered a few small groups of an extremely primitive people who are generally confounded with the Bushmen, but differ in some important respects from that race. They are the "Earthmen" of some writers, but their real name is _Kattea_, though called by their neighbours either _Ma Sarwa_ ("Bad People") or _Vaalpens_ ("Grey Paunches") from the khaki colour acquired by their bodies from creeping on all fours into their underground hovels. But the true colour is almost a pitch black, and as they are only about four feet high they are quite distinct both from the tall Bantus and the yellowish Hottentot-Bushmen. For the Zulus they are mere "dogs" or "vultures," and are certainly the most degraded of all the aborigines, being undoubtedly cannibals, eating their own aged and infirm like some of the Amazonian tribes. Their habitations are holes in the ground, rock-shelters, or caves, or lately a few hovels of mud and foliage at the foot of the hills. Of their speech nothing is known except that it is absolutely distinct both from the Bantu and the Bushman. There are no arts or industries of any kind, not even any weapons beyond those procured in exchange for ostrich feathers, skins or ivory. But they can make fire, and are thus able to cook the offal thrown to them by the Boers in return for their help in skinning the captured game. Whether they have any religious ideas it is impossible to say, all intercourse with the surrounding peoples being restricted to barter carried on with gesture language for n.o.body has ever yet mastered their tongue. A "chief" is spoken of, but he is merely a headman who presides over the little family groups of from thirty to fifty (there are no tribes properly so called), and whose purely domestic functions are acquired, not by heredity, but by personal worth, that is, physical strength.

Altogether the Kattea is perhaps the most perfect embodiment of the pure savage still anywhere surviving[292].

When the Hottentots of South Africa were questioned by scientific men a hundred years ago and more regarding their traditions, they were wont to refer to their predecessors on the coast of South Africa as a savage race living on the seash.o.r.e and subsisting on sh.e.l.lfish and the bodies of stranded whales. From their habits these were styled in Dutch the Strandloopers or "Sh.o.r.e-runners[293]." According to F. C. Shrubsall the Strandlooper of the Cape Colony caves preceded the Bushman in South Africa. They were a race of short but not dwarfish men with a much higher skull capacity than that of the average Bush race. The extreme of cranial capacity in the Strandloopers was a maximum of over 1600 c.c., while the extreme minimum among the Bush people descends as low as 955 c.c. The frontal region of the skull is much better developed than in the Bush race, and in that respect is more like the Negro. There is little or no brow prominence and one at least of the skulls is as orthognathous in facial angle as that of a European. L. Peringuey remarks also that the type was less dolichocephalic than the Bushmen and Hottentots, under 80 in cephalic index. "He was artistically gifted, like the race which occupied and decorated the Altamira ... and other caves of Spain and France. He painted; he possibly carved on rocks; he used bone tools; he made pottery; he perforated stones for either heading clubs or to be used as make-weights for digging tools; his ornaments consisted of sea-sh.e.l.ls; and the ostrich egg-sh.e.l.l discs which he made may be said to be a typical product of his industry. And this culture is retained in South Africa by a kindred race, but more dolichocephalic--the Bushmen-Hottentots. a.n.a.logous are most of his tools and his expressions of culture to those of Aurignacian man."

THE NEGRILLOES.

The proper domain of the African Negrilloes is the intertropical forest-land, although they appear to be at present confined to somewhat narrow limits, between about six degrees of lat.i.tude north and south of the equator, unless the Bushmen be included. But formerly they probably ranged much farther north, and in historic times were certainly known in Egypt some 4000 or 5000 years ago. This is evident from the frequent references to them in the "Book of the Dead" as far back as the 6th Dynasty. Like the dwarfs in medieval times, they were in high request at the courts of the Pharaohs, who sent expeditions to fetch these _Danga_ (_Tank_) from the "Island of the Double," that is, the fabulous region of Shade Land beyond Punt, where they dwelt. The first of whom there is authentic record was brought from this region, apparently the White Nile, to King a.s.sa (3300 B.C.) by his officer, Baurtet. Some 70 years later Heru-Khuf, another officer, was sent by Pepi II "to bring back a pygmy alive and in good health," from the land of great trees away to the south[294]. That the Danga came from the south we know from a later inscription at Karnak, and that the word meant dwarf is clear from the accompanying determinative of a short person of stunted growth.

It is curious to note in this connection that the limestone statue of the dwarf Nem-hotep, found in his tomb at Sakkara and figured by Ernest Grosse, has a thick elongated head suggesting artificial deformation, unshapely mouth, dull expression, strong full chest, and small deformed feet, on which he seems badly balanced. It will be remembered that Schweinfurth's Akkas from Mangbattuland were also represented as top-heavy, although the best observers, Junker and others, describe those of the Welle and Congo forests as shapely and by no means ill-proportioned.

Kollmann also, who has examined the remains of the Neolithic pygmies from the Schweizersbild Station, Switzerland, "is quite certain that the dwarf-like proportions of the latter have nothing in common with diseased conditions. This, from many points of view, is a highly interesting discovery. It is possible, as Nuesch suggests, that the widely-spread legend as to the former existence of little men, dwarfs and gnomes, who were supposed to haunt caves and retired places in the mountains, may be a reminiscence of these Neolithic pygmies[295]."

This is what may be called the picturesque aspect of the Negrillo question, which it seems almost a pity to spoil by too severe a criticism. But "ethnologic truth" obliges us to say that the identification of the African Negrillo with Kollmann's European dwarfs still lacks scientific proof. Even craniology fails us here, and although the Negrilloes are in great majority round-headed, R. Verneau has shown that there may be exceptions[296], while the theory of the general uniformity of the physical type has broken down at some other points. Thus the _Dume_, south of Gallaland, discovered by Donaldson Smith[297] in the district where the _Doko_ Negrilloes had long been heard of, and even seen by Antoine d'Abbadie in 1843, were found to average five feet, or more than one foot over the mean of the true Negrillo. D'Abbadie in fact declared that his "Dokos" were not pygmies at all[298], while Donaldson Smith now tells us that "doko" is only a term of contempt applied by the local tribes to their "poor relations."

"Their chief characteristics were a black skin, round features, woolly hair, small oval-shaped eyes, rather thick lips, high cheekbones, a broad forehead, and very well formed bodies" (p. 273).

The expression of the eye was canine, "sometimes timid and suspicious-looking, sometimes very amiable and merry, and then again changing suddenly to a look of intense anger." Pygmies, he adds, "inhabited the whole of the country north of Lakes Stephanie and Rudolf long before any of the tribes now to be found in the neighbourhood; but they have been gradually killed off in war, and have lost their characteristics by inter-marriage with people of large stature, so that only this one little remnant, the Dume, remains to prove the existence of a pygmy race. Formerly they lived princ.i.p.ally by hunting, and they still kill a great many elephants with their poisoned arrows" (pp.

274-5).

Some of these remarks apply also to the _Wandorobbo_, another small people who range nearly as far north as the Dume, but are found chiefly farther south all over Masailand, and belong, I have little doubt, to the same connection. They are the henchmen of the Masai, whom they provide with big game in return for divers services.

Those met by W. Astor Chanler were also "armed with bows and arrows, and each carried an elephant-spear, which they called _bonati_. This spear is six feet in length, thick at either end, and narrowed where grasped by the hand. In one end is bored a hole, into which is fitted an arrow two feet long, as thick as one's thumb, and with a head two inches broad. Their method of killing elephants is to creep cautiously up to the beast, and drive a spear into its loin. A quick twist separates the spear from the arrow, and they make off as fast and silently as possible. In all cases the arrows are poisoned; and if they are well introduced into the animal's body, the elephant does not go far[299]."

From some of the peculiarities of the Achua (Wochua) Negrilloes met by Junker south of the Welle one can understand why these little people were such favourites with the old Egyptian kings. These were "distinguished by sharp powers of observation, amazing talent for mimicry, and a good memory. A striking proof of this was afforded by an Achua whom I had seen and measured four years previously in Rumbek, and now again met at Gambari's. His comic ways and quick nimble movements made this little fellow the clown of our society. He imitated with marvellous fidelity the peculiarities of persons whom he had once seen; for instance, the gestures and facial expressions of Jussuf Pasha esh-Shelahis and of Haj Halil at their devotions, as well as the address and movements of Emin Pasha, 'with the four eyes' (spectacles). His imitation of Hawash Effendi in a towering rage, storming and abusing everybody, was a great success; and now he took me off to the life, rehearsing after four years, down to the minutest details, and with surprising accuracy, my anthropometric performance when measuring his body at Rumbek[300]."

A somewhat similar account is given by Ludwig Wolf of the Ba-Twa pygmies visited by him and Wissmann in the Ka.s.sai region. Here are whole villages in the forest-glades inhabited by little people with an average height of about 4 feet 3 inches. They are nomads, occupied exclusively with hunting and the preparation of palm-wine, and are regarded by their Ba-Kubu neighbours as benevolent little people, whose special mission is to provide the surrounding tribes with game and palm-wine in exchange for manioc, maize, and bananas[301].

Despite the above-mentioned deviations, occurring chiefly about the borderlands, considerable uniformity both of physical and mental characters is found to prevail amongst the typical Negrillo groups scattered in small hunting communities all over the Welle, Semliki, Congo, and Ogowai woodlands. Their main characters are thus described.

Their skin is of a reddish or yellowish brown in colour, sometimes very dark. Their height varies from 1.37 m. to 1.45 m. (4 ft. 4-1/4 in. to 4 ft. 9-1/4 in.[302]). Their hair is very short and woolly, usually of a dark rusty brown colour; the face hair is variable, but the body is usually covered with a light downy hair. The cephalic index is 79. The nose is very broad and exceptionally flattened at the root; the lips are usually thin, and the upper one long; the eyes are protuberant; the face is sometimes prognathic. Steatopygia occurs. They are a markedly intelligent people, innately musical, cunning, revengeful and suspicious in disposition, but they never steal.

They are nomadic hunters and collectors, never resorting to agriculture.

They have no domestic animals. Only meat is cooked. They wear no clothing. They use bows and poisoned arrows. Their language is unknown.

They live in small communities which centre round a cunning fighter or able hunter. Their dead are buried in the ground. They differ from surrounding Negroes in having no veneration for the departed, no amulets, no magicians or professional priests. They have charms for ensuring luck in hunting, but it is uncertain whether these charms derive their potency from the supreme being, though evidence of belief in a high-G.o.d is reported from various pygmy peoples.[303]

THE BUSHMEN AND HOTTENTOTS.

Towards the south the Negrillo domain was formerly conterminous with that of the Bushmen, of whom traces were discovered by Sir H. H.

Johnston[304] as far north as Lakes Nyasa and Tanganyika, and who, it has been conjectured, belong to the same primitive stock. The differences mental and physical now separating the two sections of the family may perhaps be explained by the different environments--hot, moist and densely wooded in the north, and open steppes in the south--but until more is known of the African pygmies their affinities must remain undecided.

The relations.h.i.+p between the Bushmen and the Hottentots is another disputed question. Early authorities regarded the Hottentots as the parent family, and the Bushmen as the offspring, but the researches of Gustav Fritsch, E. T. Hamy, F. Shrubsall[305] and others show that the Hottentots are a cross between the Bushmen--the primitive race--and the Bantu, the Bushman element being seen in the leathery colour, prominent cheek-bones, pointed chin, steatopygia and other special characters.

In prehistoric times the Hottentots ranged over a vast area. Evidence has now been produced of the presence of a belated Hottentot or Hottentot-Bushman group as far north as the Kwa-Kokue district, between Kilimanjaro and Victoria Nyanza. The _Wa-Sandawi_ people here visited by Oskar Neumann are not Bantus, and speak a language radically distinct from that of the neighbouring Bantus, but full of clicks like that of the Bushmen[306]. Two Sandawi skulls examined by Virchow[307] showed distinct Hottentot characters, with a cranial capacity of 1250 and 1265 c.c., projecting upper jaw and orthodolicho head[308]. The geographical prefix _Kwa_, common in the district (Kwa-Kokue, Kwa-Mtoro, Kwa-Hindi), is pure Hottentot, meaning "people," like the postfix _qua_ (_Kwa_) of Kora-_qua_, Nama-_qua_, etc. in the present Hottentot domain. The transposition of prefixes and postfixes is a common linguistic phenomenon, as seen in the Sumero-Akkadian of Babylonia, in the Neo-Sanskritic tongues of India, and the Latin, Oscan, and other members of the Old Italic group.

Farther south a widely-diffused Hottentot-Bushman geographical terminology attests the former range of this primitive race all over South Africa, as far north as the Zambesi. Lichtenstein had already discovered such traces in the Zulu country[309], and Vater points out that "for some districts the fact has been fully established; mountains and rivers now occupied by the Koossa [Ama-Xosa] preserve in their Hottentot names the certain proof that they at one time formed a permanent possession of this people[310]."

Thanks to the custom of raising heaps of stones or cairns over the graves of renowned chiefs, the migrations of the Hottentots may be followed in various directions to the very heart of South Zambesia. Here the memory of their former presence is perpetuated in the names of such water-courses as Nos-ob, Up, Mol-opo, Hyg-ap, Gar-ib, in which the syllables _ob_, _up_, _ap_, _ib_ and others are variants of the Hottentot word _ib_, _ip_, water, river, as in _Gar-ib_, the "Great River," now better known as the Orange River. The same indications may be traced right across the continent to the Atlantic, where nearly all the coast streams--even in Hereroland, where the language has long been extinct--have the same ending[311].

On the west side the Bushmen are still heard of as far north as the Cunene, and in the interior beyond Lake Ngami nearly to the right bank of the Zambesi. But the Hottentots are now confined mainly to Great and Little Namaqualand. Elsewhere there appear to be no full-blood natives of this race, the Koraquas, Gonaquas, Griquas, etc. being all Hottentot-Boer or Hottentot-Bantu half-castes of Dutch speech. In Cape Colony the tribal organisation ceased to exist in 1810, when the last Hottentot chief was replaced by a European magistrate. Still the Koraquas keep themselves somewhat distinct about the Upper Orange and Vaal Rivers, and the Griquas in Griqualand East, while the Gonaquas, that is, "Borderers," are being gradually merged in the Bantu populations of the Eastern Provinces. There are at present scarcely 180,000 south of the Orange River, and of these the great majority are half-breeds[312].

Despite their extremely low state of culture, or, one might say, the almost total lack of culture, the Bushmen are distinguished by two remarkable qualities, a fine sense of pictorial or graphic art[313], and a rich imagination displayed in a copious oral folklore, much of which, collected by Bleek, is preserved in ma.n.u.script form in Sir George Grey's library at Cape Town[314]. The materials here stored for future use, perhaps long after the race itself has vanished for ever, comprise no less than 84 thick volumes of 3600 double-column pages, besides an unfinished Bushman dictionary with 11,000 entries. There are two great sections, (1) Myths, fables, legends and poetry, with tales about the sun and moon, the stars, the _Mantis_ and other animals, legends of peoples who dwelt in the land before the Bushmen, songs, charms, and even prayers; (2) Histories, adventures of men and animals, customs, superst.i.tions, genealogies, and so on.

In the tales and myths the sun, moon, and animals speak either with their own proper clicks, or else use the ordinary clicks in some way peculiar to themselves. Thus Bleek tells us that the tortoise changes clicks in l.a.b.i.als, the ichneumon in palatals, the jackal subst.i.tutes linguo-palatals for l.a.b.i.als, while the moon, hare, and ant-eater use "a most unp.r.o.nounceable click" of their own. How many there may be altogether, not one of which can be properly uttered by Europeans, n.o.body seems to know. But grammarians have enumerated nine, indicated each by a graphic sign as under:

Cerebral [Symbol] Palatal [Symbol]

Dental [Symbol] Lateral (Faucal) [Symbol]

Guttural [Symbol] l.a.b.i.al [Symbol]

Spiro-dental [Symbol] Linguo-palatal [Symbol]

Undefined [Symbol]

From Bushman--a language in a state of flux, fragmentary as the small tribal or rather family groups that speak it[315]--these strange inarticulate sounds pa.s.sed to the number of four into the remotely related Hottentot, and thence to the number of three into the wholly unconnected Zulu-Xosa. But they are heard nowhere else to my knowledge except amongst the newly-discovered Wa-Sandawi people of South Masailand. At the same time we know next to nothing of the Negrillo tongues, and should clicks be discovered to form an element in their phonetic system also[316], it would support the a.s.sumption of a common origin of all these dwarfish races now somewhat discredited on anatomical grounds.

M. G. Bertin, to whom we are indebted for an excellent monograph on the Bushman[317], rightly remarks that he is not, at least mentally, so debased as he has been described by the early travellers and by the neighbouring Bantus and Boers, by whom he has always been despised and harried. "His greatest love is for freedom, he acknowledges no master, and possesses no slaves. It is this love of independence which made him prefer the wandering life of a hunter to that of a peaceful agriculturist or shepherd, as the Hottentot. He rarely builds a hut, but prefers for abode the natural caves he finds in the rocks. In other localities he forms a kind of nest in the bush--hence his name of Bushman--or digs with his nails subterranean caves, from which he has received the name of 'Earthman.' His garments consist only of a small skin. His weapons are still the spear, arrow and bow in their most rudimentary form. The spear is a mere branch of a tree, to which is tied a piece of bone or flint; the arrow is only a reed treated in the same way. The arrow and spear-heads are always poisoned, to render mortal the slight wounds they inflict. He gathers no flocks, which would impede his movements, and only accepts the help of dogs as wild as himself. The Bushmen have, however, one implement, a rounded stone perforated in the middle, in which is inserted a piece of wood; with this instrument, which carries us back to the first age of man, they dig up a few edible roots growing wild in the desert. To produce fire, he still retains the primitive system of rubbing two pieces of wood--another prehistoric survival."

Touching their name, it is obvious that these scattered groups, without hereditary chiefs or social organisation of any kind, could have no collective designation. The term _Khuai_, of uncertain meaning, but probably to be equated with the Hottentot _Khoi_, "Men," is the name only of a single group, though often applied to the whole race. _Saan_, their Hottentot name, is the plural of Sa, a term also of uncertain origin; _Ba-roa_, current amongst the Be-Chuanas, has not been explained, while the Zulu _Abatwa_ would seem to connect them even by name with Wolf's and Stanley's _Ba-Twa_ of the Congo forest region.

Other so-called tribal names (there are no "tribes" in the strict sense of the word) are either nicknames imposed upon them by their neighbours, or else terms taken from the localities, as amongst the Fuegians.

We may conclude with the words of W. J. Sollas: "The more we know of these wonderful little people the more we learn to admire and like them.

To many solid virtues--untiring energy, boundless patience, and fertile invention, steadfast courage, devoted loyalty, and family affection--they added a native refinement of manners and a rare aesthetic sense. We may learn from them how far the finer excellences of life may be attained in the hunting stage. In their golden age, before the coming of civilised man, they enjoyed their life to the full, glad with the gladness of primeval creatures. The story of their later days, their extermination and the cruel manner of it, is a tale of horror on which we do not care to dwell. They haunt no more the sunlit veldt, their hunting is over, their nation is destroyed; but they leave behind an imperishable memory, they have immortalised themselves in their art[318]."

FOOTNOTES:

[223] C. Meinhof holds that Proto-Bantu arose through the mixture of a Sudan language with one akin to Fulah. _An Introduction to the Study of African Languages_, 1915, p. 151 sqq.

[224] Bantu, properly Aba-ntu, "people." _Aba_ is one of the numerous personal prefixes, each with its corresponding singular form, which are the cause of so much confusion in Bantu nomenclature. To _aba_, _ab_, _ba_ answers a sing. _umu_, _um_, _mu_, so that sing. _umu-ntu_, _um-ntu_ or _mu-ntu_, a man, a person; plu. _aba-ntu_, _ab-ntu_, ba-ntu.