Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/143

 INHABITANTS OF SOUTU AFUICA. 107 have all retreated l)oyond the Oninj^o. liut the ostrich Is still found in the wild Ktato iu a few remote dixtricts of the colony and in the Kalahari. According to Anderson, there exist two distinct siwcics of thin bird in South Africa, both differ- ing from the Mauritanian variety, * Amongst the other characteristic birds of the Cape region specially noteworthy are the republican or philhetteroH^ whose colonies build enormous nesti* protected by a sort of roof, and the secretary {Serpentarim repfi/ioorus), which seizes snakes and kills them with blows of the wing, or else bears them aloft and breaks their vertebra) by dropi)iug them from great heights on the hard ground. It is for- bidden to kill or hunt this useful bird. The reptile world is rej)re8ented by numerous species, amongst which are several venomous serpents and snakes, such as the cobra, the garter snake, and the much dreaded puff-adder, which fortunately for the wayfarer is of somewhat sluggish motion. The inlets along the seaboard are also infe^^ted by several species of electric fishes, and by others rendered dangerous by their venomous darts or poisonous flesh. Inhabitants of South Afrka. More than half of the native inhabitants of Austral Africa, south of the Cunene and Zambese rivers, belong to the widespread Bantu family. It may be sjiid in a general way that a line drawn from Algoa Bay in the extreme south northwards to the latitude of Lake Ngami will form the western limit of the Bantu peoples, separating them from the Bushmen and Hottentot domain stretching thence to the Atlantic. The eastern slopes of the mountains, the valleys of the I'pper Orange, the colony of Natal, and the whole of the Limpopo basin, form part of this vast ethnical region of the Bantus, that is " Men " iu a pre-eminent sense, a region which further comprises the whole of the south torrid zone, and even extends beyond the equator us far as the Kameroon highlands. Like the vege- table species of the equatorial regions, which have gradually invaded the seaboard, attracted, so to say, by the warm marine currents carrying their seeds from shore to shore ; like the northern animals which have spread along the coast of the Indian Ocean to the southern extremity of the continent ; the victorious Bantu tribes, also from the north, have in the sixnie way carried tluir conquering arms from river basin to river basin, at last reaching the shores of the Southern Ocean, which stretches away to the everlasting snows and ice of the Antarctic waters. The Buntus of the British and Dutch possessions are roughly designated by the general name of Katirs, extended to them by the Tortuguese at the time of the discovery. But the word itself is of Arabic origin, meaning " unbeliever," and is in this sense freely applied by the followers of the Prophet to all heathen or non-Mohammedan populations, and especially to such as have formally rejected the teachings of the Koran. Hence there are Kafirs in Asia — the 8iah-Posh of Katiristan — as well as in Africa. But in the latter continent this generic term has