south and the east is akin to the modification the stem has undergone nearer to its true home on the West Coast of Africa, where to the north of Sierra Leone and behind the coast regions of the Ivory, Gold, and Slave Coasts it has, by admixture with the Berber tribes of the Western Soudan, produced the Black Moors, namely the Mandingo, the Hausa, and Oullaf. These Black Moors of the Western Soudan have attained to a high pitch of barbaric culture; it appears to be a further development of the true Negro culture, but it is so suffused with the Mohammedan idea and law that it is not in this state that we can best study the native culture of the pure Negro. Neither can we study it well in those south and east regions where it has adopted Bantu language and culture to a certain extent.
I will not, however, attempt to enter here upon the question of the continental distribution of the Negro and Bantu stocks; I will merely beg observers of African tribes to note carefully whether their tribe is given to street-cleaning, to keeping slaves in separate villages, or to venerating a great female god. If it is, it has got a Bantu culture; if, in addition, it has a regular military organisation, or a keen commercial spirit, or a certain ability to rule over the tribes round it, I beg they will suspect Negro blood and do their best to give us that tribe's migration history; and then we may in future times be able to settle the question of race distribution on better lines than our present state of knowledge allows of. Having said that the law and institutions of the true Negro stock cannot best be studied in those regions where they are adulterated by alien cultures, it remains to say where they can best be studied. I think that undoubtedly this region is that of the Oil Rivers.
