Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/428

 358 "WEST AFRICA. > peopled by natives of Kanuri speecli, lies the picturesque village of Yaggiiberi^ in the most productive part of Kanera. Some 12 miles to the south-east of this place stands the Arab town of Mondo, and midway between it and the lake follow Nguri and Dibelontcid, the former capital of the Danoas, the latter of the Ngijems. It was in the neighbourhood of Mao that Beurmann was murdered in 1863. Thinking him proof against lead and steel, the assassins garotted him with a running noose. BORNU. According to the natives, the true name of Bornu is Barr Noa, or " Land of Noah," given to it by the Mussulman missionaries because of its surprising fertility. Then the legend, seizing on this word, related that here the ark settled after the subsidence of the waters, the African Ararat being sought in the isolated Ha jar Teus rock, on the south side- of Lake Tsad. The limits of the kingdom are clearly defined only towards the east by the lake and the course of the Shari. In the north there can be no natural frontiers, the transition between the grassy and desert zones here shifting with the winds, the rains, and the incursions of marauding tribes. The southern confines are also very uncertain, thanks to the almost incessant warfare carried on between the Mussulman populations and the pagan highlanders. Towards the west the border- line is better marked between the civilised Bornu and Ilaussa states, although even here frequently modified by wars and local revolutions. The total area may be approximately set down at 56,000 square miles, with a population roughly estimated by Barth and Nachtigal at upwards of five millions. Inhabitants. The extremely mixed inhabitants of Bornu, collectively called Berauna, present a surprising diversity of colour, stature, and other physical features. The term Kanuri, current in the country for centuries, designates not a particular race, but simply the more civilised residents, in whom have been gradually merged the various ethnical elements introduced by trade, slavery, Avar, or peaceful immigra. tion. The sense of the word is unknown, although by a complacent popular etymology referred to the Arabic nur, " light," whence Ka-Nuri, or " People of Light," earned by their mission of illuminators amid the darkness of the surround- ing heathen world. The fanatical Fuiahs, however, read it otherwise, substituting nar, " fire," for nur, and designating the lukewarm. Mussulman inhabitants of Bornu as Ka-Nari, or " People of Fire," that is, doomed to hell-fire. South-west of the capital dwells the noble Magomi nation, who claim to be sprung of the same stock as the ancient dynasty which ruled for nearly a thousand years over Kanem and Bornu. They seem to have come originally from Kanem, as did also the Sugusti and Tomaghera people of the marshy coastlands, and the Koyams west of Kuka, who alone have preserved the camel as a domestic animal. The So, or true aborigines, were gradually absorbed by these immigrants