of the Bahr-el-Jebel, the Bongo (Dor), Rol, and Krej of the western affluents of the White Nile, the Funj of Senaar, and the Shilluks and Dinkas about the Sobat confluence. The most numerous and widespread are the Zandeh, the eastern portion of whose territory has alone been explored. They are divided into several independent states, stretching from the Bahr-el-Jebel half across the continent, probably to the territory of the Fans in the far West. Of the reduced nations, the Shilluks and Dinkas are by far the most important. The Shilluks appear to be of the same stock as the Funj of Senaar, who by fusion with the Arabs formed a powerful kingdom, which in the last century extended northwards beyond the Atbara confluence. Of the Dinkas, who number several millions, as many as twenty-five distinct tribes are mentioned by D. G. Beltrame,[1] who has resided several years amongst the native communities of the White Nile.
Although grouped as Negroes proper, very few of these Nilotic peoples present the ideal type of the Blacks, such as we find it amongst the Ashantis and other inhabitants of Upper Guinea. The complexion is in general less black, the nose less flat, the lips less protruding, the hair less woolly, the dolichocephaly and prognathism less marked—in a word, the salient features of the Negro race less prominent than elsewhere. Apart from the more minute shades of transition due to diverse intermingling with the Hamites and Semites.[2] two distinct types may be plainly distinguished—one black and long-headed (Shilluk, Dinka, Nuer, Mittu), the other reddish or ruddy brown and short-headed (Bongo, Zandeh, &c.). The complexion of the latter may possibly be due to the properties of the red earth prevalent in their districts.[3] But no theory has been advanced to account for their brachycephaly, which is all the more difficult to explain, inasmuch as it is characteristic neither of the aboriginal Negro, nor of the intruding Hamite and Semite elements.
Schweinfurth tells us that the Bongos are "hardly removed from the lowest grade of brachycephaly" (op. cit. i., 263), and the same is largely true of the Zandeh. But this feature appears to be altogether far more general amongst the Negro races than is usually supposed. Of the eighteen skulls from Equatorial Africa in the Barnard Davis Collection (now in the museum of the College of Surgeons, London), as many as four are distinctly round-headed. Craniology thus fails in Negroland, as it does in so many other regions, as a constant factor in determining racial types.
The Nilotic races appear to form a connecting link between those of Baghirmi in the Tsad basin, and the non-Bantu peoples between the Kilima-Njaro highlands and the east side of the Victoria Nyanza, who have been recently visited by the Rev. T. Wakefield and Mr. Thomson. The Wa-Kavirondo nation of this region are allied in speech to the Shilluks and the Yambu of the Sobat Valley.[4] The language of their neighbours, the Oigob (Masai), also presents a remarkable peculiarity in the presence of grammatical gender, which it has in common with all the dialects of the Nilotic Negroes, except the Dinka.[5] This point is of great philological interest, grammatical gender being a feature hitherto supposed to be restricted to the three inflecting families (Aryan, Semitic, and Hamitic), besides the Hottentot, by Lepsius, partly on this ground, affiliated to the Hamitic. In Oigob gender, represented by l masculine, and n feminine, is fully developed. Thus : ol = he, that man ; il = those men ; en, eng = she ; ing = those women ; el-e = this man ; en-a = this woman ; with which compare the Bari : lo = this man ; na = this woman ; the Bongo : bah = he ; hoh =: she ; and the Shilluk : nenno = he ; náno =. she. Lepsius, however, is inclined to regard the so-called gender particles
- ↑ "Grammatica e Vocabolario delle lingua Denka," Rome, 1880, p. 231.
- ↑ In Senaar alone the Arabs reckon as many as six gradations between the pure Negro and the Semite: 1. El-Asriif, or yellow; 2. El-Kat Fatalobin, the Abyssinian; 3. El-Akdar, or red; 4. El-Aziaq, or blue ; 6. El-Ahsdar, or "green " ; 6. Ahbit, the Nubian.
- ↑ Schweinfurth, "Heart of Africa."
- ↑ Rev. T. "Wakefield, in " Proceedings of the Geographical Society," for Dccember, 1882.
- ↑ Lepsius, "Einleitung."
