Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/437

 BAGHIRMI. 8g5 ings reacliing down to the feet. Of these armoured corps there are altoo-ether about a thousand, more formidable in appearance than really dano-erous. The men get no pay, but when invalided receive allotments of arable land, the great military and civil dignitaries being remunerated with fiefs. The provinces directly administered are intermingled, great and small, with the feudatory states attached under diverse conditions to the central authority. In most of these secondary kingdoms the rulers continue to dispose of the lives of their subjects, and organise razzias on their own account among the surroundino- pagan populations. The homage paid to the Mandara sultan even exceeds that claimed by the Bomu monarch himself. No ceremonial is more strictly enforced and more slavishly performed than that of the court of Doloo. Baghirmt. Baghirmi, properly so called, consists of the open and somewhat marshy plain comprised between the Lower Shari, Lake Tsad, the Sokoro hills, and the cliffs skirting the west side of Lake Fitri, an area altogether of scarcely 20,000 square miles. But to Baghirmi also belong politically the conterminous regions inhabited by tributary pagan populations, or to which slave-hunting expeditions are regularly sent, raising the total area to more than 60,000 square miles. According to the Arab writers, the natives were called Baghirmi (Bakirmi, Bakarmi), from the two words hagcjar miya, or "a hundred cows," because the first sovereigns of the countr}^ had imposed a tribute of a hundred head of cattle on each tribe subject to them. But in the native language these called themselves Barmaghe, of which Baghirmi may be a corrupt form. The population, estimated by Barth about the middle of the century at one million five hundred thousand, appears to have been since reduced by at least one- third by sanguinary wars with Wadai, famines, and marauding expeditions. Like the Kanuri of Bomu, the civilised inhabitants of Baghirmi proper are a mixed people descended from the So, the Makari. and other aborigines, intermingled with Arabs and Fulahs, and further modified by the introduction of Mohammedan culture. According to the local records and traditions, the founders of the state came from Arabia at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth centuries, when a general movement of migration and conquest was in progress, as at present, from east to west. Inhabitants. The Baghirmi are physically a much finer people than the Kanuri, the women especially being distinguished by really pleasant features and an agreeable expression. The men are well built, with robust wiry frames, seldom of very dark complexion and mostly with a reddish, almost metallic tinge. They are generally intelligent and skilful craftsmen, noted especially for tbeir excellency in weaving, dyeing, leatherwork, and embroidery On his return from the victorious expedi-