Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/534

 440 WEST AFEICA. peoples appear to be the dwarfisli races variously known as Akkas or Tiki-Tikis, Vua- Twas or Ba-Twas. Sufficient materials have not yet been collected to enable philologists to offer a satisfactory classification of the forty or fifty distinct Bantu idioms current in the Congo basin. The ethnical prefixes Ba, Ma, Ova, Wa, Yua, M, Tu, Mu, may doubtless indicate a certain relationship between the several groups so indicated, but such indications are far from sufficient to serve as the basis even of an approximate classification, so that all attempts in this direction can for the present claim nothing more than a provisional value. At the same time, amid this chaos of ethnical elements, certain groups stand out more prominently as at present distinguished, either by their warlike character or commercial enterprise. Thus the Nyamezi to the east, and the Rua to the west of Tanganyika, serve as the chief forwarders of the international traffic between the eastern Seaboard and the Congo basin. The Reggas also occupy a vast territory between the great river and Lake Mutu Nzige, while the Ba-Lolo are widely distributed along the banks of all the affluents within the great curve described by the Congo north of the equator. The Tu-Shilonge, proud of their higher culture, hold the region where the Lu Lua and Kassai enter the wooded plains, while the Lunda predominate about the southern affluents of the Kassai. Higher up follow the Kioko, enterprising traders, who push their expeditions from the Atlantic to the great equatorial lakes. On the Congo where it begins to trend towards the south-west, the most energetic and warlike people are the Ba-Ngala. Lower down the dominant nations are the Bu-Banghi, who give their name to the U-Banghi river, the Ba-Teke above Stanley Pool, the AVa-Buma of the Lower Kassai, and the Ba-Fiot, better known as the Congolese, from the Ba-Congo division of this group, who dwelt on the Lower Congo, and who have long main- tained direct commercial relations with the Europeans. A characteristic trait of the eastern populations is their love of personal ornament, which is gradually replaced by amulets and fetishes. Notwithstanding the assumed incapacity of the Negro peoples to develop ex- tensive political systems, some large Bantu states have been founded within as well as beyond the Congo basin. At the arrival of the Portuguese, towards the end of the fifteenth century, both sides of the estuary as well as a large part of the southern plateau recognised a sovereign who resided in a capital now known by the Portuguese name of San Salvador. In the region watered by the Kassai affluents the political preponderance belongs to the Lunda nation, whose king, the Muata Yamvo, receives the tribute of hundreds of vassals scattered over a territory as large as France. Towards the Lua-Pula headstreams stretches another great kingdom, that of the Muata Kazembe, who appears at the end of the last century to have enjoyed the supremacy over the neighbouring states. Westwards, also, the Upper Lua-Laba and Lu-Fira basins constitute the domain of the Msiri, at present a still more powerful sovereign. Farther north, in the region where these various streams converge to form the Congo, the tribes are grouped politically under the common suzerainty of the King of Kassongo. At the same time the