It follows that the Tibus must be regarded as a branch of the Hamitic stock, who, during their long isolation in Tibesti, have had time to develop an independent idiom no longer traceable to a common Tibu-Berber source. A notable feature of this idiom is the absence of grammatical gender, placing it even on a lower level than many Negro tongues of the Upper Nile and Kilima-Njaro regions. It appears, however, to supply what may be called the "raw material," out of which gender has been elaborated in the Hamitic languages. Thus o seems to be characteristic of masculine, d or t of feminine terms, as in o-mri = man; á-di = woman. With this feminine dental may be compared the Berber t, which is both pre- and post-fixed, as in akli negro; taklit = negress.

The word omri may serve in a way to connect the Tibu Hamites with the Galla, a chief branch of the Eastern Hamites, who also call themselves Oromo, Orma, Ormu men. To these Eastern Hamites, who skirt the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea from the Equator to Egypt, and of whom the ancient Egyptians themselves were a branch, the vague terms Kushite and Ethiopian are frequently applied. By the intervening Abyssinian highlands they are divided into a southern and a northern group, the chief branches of the former being the Afars (Dankali), the Somali, Galla, Kaffa,15 and outlying Wa-Huma; of the latter the Saho, Bogos, or Bilin (?), Beja, or Bishari; the old Egyptians, modern Kopts, and Fellahin, besides the Agau and some other scattered communities in Abyssinia.

The Wa-Huma, to whom the attention of ethnologists has scarcely yet been seriously directed, present some points of great anthropological interest, probably affording a solution of the difficulties connected with the constituent elements of the Bantu races in East Central Africa. Speke had already observed that the chiefs of the Bantu nations about the great lakes were always Wa-Huma, a pastoral people evidently of Galla stock, and originally immigrants from the Galla country. Since then it has been ascertained that several Wa-Huma communities live interspersed amongst the mixed Bantu nations of the lacustrine plateau, and J. M. Schuver was recently informed that the Negro inhabitants of the Afilo country were governed by a Galla aristocracy.16

From these and other indications it seems highly probable that in point of fact the Bantu peoples are fundamentally Negroes in diverse proportions affected by Wa-Huma or Galla, that is, Hamitic elements. The Wa-Huma, who, under the name of Wa-Tusi," are found as far south as the U-Nyamezi country, are by recent observers unanimously described as a very fine race, with oval face, straight nose, small mouth, and

generally speaking regular Caucasic features. Such a type is found everywhere cropping out amid the surrounding Negroid populations throughout the southern half of the continent, and the conclusion seems irresistible that it should be referred to these Wa-Huma or Hamitic Gallas, probably for ages advancing as conquerors from the north-east into the heart of the continent. No distinct mention is made of the Wa-Huma speech. It is known, however, to differ from that of the Bantus proper; and when we hear that the late King M'tesa of U-Ganda spoke Galla as his mother-tongue, and was proud of his Galla ancestors, little doubt can remain on this point. The Wa-Huma are also distinguished by their intense love both of personal freedom and political autonomy, sentiments which are but feebly developed amongst the true Negro populations. is their horror of captivity and a foreign yoke, that those who have failed to maintain their independence are no longer regarded as true Wa-Huma. The very women, who have the misfortune to fall into the hands of the Arab slave-dealers, are looked upon as degraded for ever, and should they escape from bondage, are burnt alive by their own people. Traits of this sort would almost alone suffice to suspect at least a very large infusion of non-Negro blood in the Wa-Huma race. This element we may now trace with some confidence to the Hamites of North-East Africa as its true source.

Such

The Afars, Somali, Galla, and other members of the Southern Hamitic group need not here detain us further. They lie mostly beyond the jurisdiction of the Egyptian Mudirs, and very few of their tribes have hitherto been brought within the sphere of civilising influences. Enough to state in a general way that their languages all belong to the Hamitic connection, forming outlying branches of the great linguistic family from the earliest times diffused throughout the whole of North Africa, and in this region corresponding to the Bantu in the southern half of the continent.

Of the northern group of Ethiopian Hamites by far the most important are the Beja, or Bishari, who have all the greater claim to the consideration of the ethnologist, that their ethnical status has hitherto been persistently ignored alike by British Cabinet Ministers, officials, and newspaper correspondents. They are the unfortunate people, many of whose tribes have recently come into collision with the British forces in the Suakin district, but who continue to be spoken of as "Arabs" by those statesmen who are unable to recognise more than two races in Egyptian Sudán, that is, the Negro and Arab. Thus on February 27th of the present year the Marquis of Hartington telegraphs to General Graham: "Tell them we are not at war

with the Arabs, but must disperse force threatening Suakin." And General Graham himself sends a letter" written in Arabic" to the chiefs of the tribes about Trinkitat and Tokar, in which they are again assumed to be "Arabs." We all remember the ignominious fate of that now historical document, which was set up as a target and riddled by bullets, as some dangerous fetish, by those Hamitic followers of Muhammad Osman Dakanah, whose own language, the To-Bedawieh, differs almost as much from Arabic as does that of the British troops itself. All this immediately preceded the sanguinary engagement of El Teb, and it may be asserted with Sir Stafford Northcote, though for reasons different from those implied by him, that "if the position of England had been such as it ought to have been, we should have had none of the slaughter which then took place." In fact, had a moderate amount of attention been paid by our Foreign Office to the true ethnical conditions in Egyptian Sudán, most of the complications might probably have been avoided that have since arisen in that distracted region. But the necessity for a systematic study of ethnology has not yet made itself apparent to the rulers of the most multifarious complexity of tribes and peoples ever entrusted to the charge of a single Administration.

The Bejas are the true autochthonous element in East Nubia, where they occupy the whole of the arid steppe-lands stretching from the Nile to the Red Sea, and from the Abyssinian frontier northwards as far as the parallel of Keneh and Kosseir in Upper Egypt.18 Their main divisions are the Ababdeh, to be identified with Pliny's Gabadei about the Egyptian frontier, the Hadendoah, Hassanab, and Demilab, along the coastlands, and as far inland as the El-Matre wells on the Suakin-Berber route; the Bishari proper, thence westwards to the Nile; the Amarar and Ashraf north from the Suakin-Berber route, and here and there overlapping the Bishari; the Kamlab, Halenga, and Beni-Amer along the Abyssinian frontier from the Nile to the Red Sea in the order here given.

By Linant Bey (Linant de Bellefonds), one of the most intelligent observers of these peoples, they are described as of European (Caucasic) type, often very handsome, of a bronze, swarthy, or light chocolate complexion, with long, crisp, but not woolly hair, generally falling in ringlets over the shoulders.19 So also the Macrobes, of the same region, were long ago described by Herodotus (Book III) as "the tallest and finest of men," to whom Cambyses sent envoys from their kindred of Elephantine Island, but failed to reduce. Nevertheless, through long contact with the surrounding African populations the present Bejas show here and there evident traces of Negro blood, conspicuous

especially in the thick lips and broad nose of some of their tribes. On the other hand, the northern or Ababdeh branch have been largely assimilated even in speech to their Arab neighbours and hereditary foes, the Antúni (Ma'azeh) of Upper Egypt.20 All are now more or less zealous Muhammadans, occupied chiefly with camel-breeding and as caravan leaders, governed by hereditary sheikhs, and, like their Hamitic kindred elsewhere, distinguished by their personal bravery and love of freedom.

Beja, the most collective national name, may be traced through the harder Arabic form Bega21 of the tenth century to the Búga (Bovyacıтai) of the Greek and Axumite (Geez) inscriptions, and thence perhaps to the Buka of the hieroglyphic records. These Bovyaciтai appear to be identical with the Bréμuves (Kopt. Balnemmoui) who are already mentioned by Strabo,22 and who from the third to the sixth century of the new era infested the southern frontiers of Egypt. Often defeated by Aurelian and Probus, they nevertheless so continued to harass these outlying provinces of the empire, that Diocletian was at last induced to withdraw the Roman garrisons from the region of the Cataracts, replacing them by the warlike Nobatæ tribes from the great oasis of Kargey in Upper Egypt.

THE NUBAS.

The just-mentioned Nobatæ of Diocletian are commonly assumed to be the modern Nubians. But, although not yet recognised in British official reports, the Nubian race and name have even a more venerable antiquity than this statement would imply. In a passage quoted in note 22 we find mention already made by Strabo of the Noûßai; and in another passage the same writer, who flourished three hundred years before the time of Diocletian, describes these Nubæ as "a great nation" dwelling in Libya, that is, Africa, along the left bank of the Nile from Meroe to the bends of the river.23 The word itself has even been identified by some writers with the land of Nub or Nob, that is, "Gold," the region about Mount Elbeh on the Red Sea coast over against Jiddah, where the Egyptians worked the precious metal from the remotest times.

But this identification must be rejected since the discovery that the cradle of the Nuba race is not to the east but to the west of the Nile," in the Kordofan highlands. The final syllable fan of the very word Kordo-fan is explained to mean in the Nuba language land, country, thus answering to the Arabic dār, as in Dar-Fur = the land of the Fur people. Both the Fur and the Kordo, if these latter are identical with the

Kargo of the Jebel-Kargo, are themselves of Nuba stock and speech, and the term Nuba is still current in Kordofan both in an ethnical and a geographical sense, indicating the JebelNuba uplands inhabited by the Nuba tribe. Here, therefore, is the true home of the race, some of whom appear to have migrated northwards some two thousand years ago, settling partly in the Kargey oasis (Diocletian's Nobatæ), partly in the narrow valley of the Nile about Meroe (Strabo's Nubæ).

Since those days there have always been Nubæ, Nobatæ, or Nubians in the Nile Valley, mainly in the region of the Cataracts, and we read that after their removal hither from Kargey the Nobatæ dwelt for some time peacefully with the Blemmyes (Hamitic Bejas). They even made common cause with them against the Romans; but the confederacy was crushed by Maximinus in 451. Then the Bejas withdrew to their old homes in the Arabian desert, while the Nobatæ, embracing Christianity in 545, developed a powerful Christian state in the Nile Valley. Silco, founder of this kingdom of Dongola, as it was called from its capital, bore the title of "King of the Noubads and of all the Ethiopians," that is, of the present Nubian and Beja nations. His empire lasted for 700 years, and was finally overthrown by the Arabs in the thirteenth century, since which time the Nile Nubians have been Muhammadans. They also gradually withdrew to their present limits between Egypt and Old Dongola, the rest of their territory thence to Khartum being occupied by the Sheygyeh, Robabat, Jalin, and other powerful Arab tribes.

There are thus two main divisions of the Nuba race: the Nubas proper of Kordofan, found also dispersedly in Dar-Fur; and the Nile Nubas, commonly called Nubians in European books of travel, but who now call themselves Barabra.25 By the latter the term Nuba has been rejected, and is even regarded as an insult when applied to them by others. The old national name appears to have fallen into discredit in the Nile Valley, where it has become synonymous with "slave," owing to the vast number of slaves supplied for ages by the Nuba populations of Kordofan and Dar-Fur.26 The Nile Nubas themselves supply no slaves to the market. Constituting settled and semi-civilised Muhammadan communities, they are treated on a footing of perfect equality in Egypt, where large numbers are engaged as free labourers, porters, "costermongers," and in various other pursuits. They are a strong, muscular people, essentially agricultural, more warlike and energetic than the Egyptians, whom they also excel in moral qualities. Their Muhammadanism is not of a fanatical type, and although the present Mahdi is a Nubian of Dongola he has found his chief