Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/252

 mothers, their children. The hereditary enemies of the Issas are the Gadibursis, also a Somali people, bold mounted marauders, who occasionally seize their flocks even in the neighbourhood of Zeila.

In numbers and extent of territory occupied by them, the Gallas are one of the largest nations in Africa. Some of their communities are even settled on the frontiers of Tigré, along the eastern slope of the Abyssinian main range. Even as far as the equator, over a space of 600 miles from north to south, are scattered or grouped together tribes of the same race, whilst Gallas are met with from east to west throughout the region which stretches from the Upper Nile to the Somali coast. But it is not yet known where the national type is the best represented, or which is the most powerful tribe, the country of the southern Gallas being one which has been the least explored by European travellers.

In this part of Africa an area larger than that of France is still unexplored, and everything strengthens the belief that this region, stretching south of Kaffa, will be the last to be visited by travellers. The only Gallas we are well acquainted with are those of the northern region, who, since the middle of the sixth century, have dwelt in and about the Abyssinian states. It is therefore natural that these races should be studied after those of Abyssinia. According to Beke the Gallas were so named by the neighbouring peoples after a river of Gurageh near which they fought a great battle; but this appellation is usually interpreted in the sense of "Land-hunters," a term denoting their nomad life and conquests. They call themselves Oromo, "Men," or Ilm-Orma, "Sons of Men," possibly "Brave Men;" although according to D'Abbadie this name, like the Spanish hidalgo, is sjnionymous with "Nobles." The traditions of the tribes vary ; still the bulk of the Gallas, when asked whence their ancestors came, point to the south. Their original home is said to be towards the southern uplands, and the tribes near Mount Kenia are said still to go on a pilgrimage to this mountain, bringing offerings to it as if to their mother. It appears certain that towards the middle of the fifteenth century a great exodus took place among the peoples throughout all eastern Africa, and that this movement continued during the following centuries; it has even continued till recently in a north-westerly direction. The Abyssinian Gallas, the Wa-Humas of the riverain states of Nyanza, were to the north and west the advance guard of this migration of the Oromo peoples, which according to Barth and Hartraann, was probably caused by some great eruption of Kenia and other volcanoes of equatorial Africa.

In any case the "Sons of Men," whom some authors have termed Semites and even "Aryans," are Nigritians, connected by imperceptible transitions with the populations of Central Africa. In many points they resemble their northern neighbours, the Agau, and their eastern and irreconcilable enemies the Somalis. Both speak dialects of the same linguistic family, which has been provisionally classed in the "Hamitic" group. According to Krapf, all the Gallas, those living