Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/38

 20 SOUTH AND EAST AFRICA. The Bundas. South of the tribes constituting the Congo group, and as far as the province of Mossamedes, stretches the linguistic domain of the Bundas (Bundo, Bond^), called also " Angola " like the whole land itself. According to one rather far- fetched etymology, the term Bundu is explained to mean " Strikers,*' or " Con- querors," recalling in fact the successive invasions of the race and its victories over the aboriginal populations. But the name seems rather to denote " family,** " descent," thus implying a consciousness of their common kinship on the part of those speaking the lingna gernl or " general language " of Angola. This Bunda speech is one of the most widely diffused in Africa, and one of those which have been longest known to students, without however having yet been thoroughly studied. Towards the end of the seventeenth century an Angolan grammar was published in Lisbon, and devotional works had already been com- posed in this language. For over two centuries Europeans have been familiar with Am-Bunda (Hem-Bunda or Kin-Bunda), whose domain, according to Monteiro, begins immediately below the river Dand^, and stretches thence far beyond the frontiers of Angola proper. If not spoken, it is at least understood by numerous tribes of the interior, who maintain uninterrupted commercial relations with Bunda caravan people. Thus it was not as " Strikers," but as traders, that the inhabitants of Angola propagated the use of their "lingua franca," from the Atlantic seaboard as far as the Congo, Ku-Bango, and Zambese basins. In the Portuguese possessions it is spoken in two dialects, distinct enough to have been classed as separate languages. These are the Angolan, or Bunda, properly so called, which is current north of the Cuanza, and the southern Bunda, which prevails throughout the whole region comprised between Benguella and the Bihe territory. Portuguese terms have penetrated into both varieties, and in fact into all the inland dialects as far as and beyond the Kassai. The Bundas (A-Bundo, Bin-Bundo) are thus divided into twto main divisions, a northern and a southern. But the latter, so far from forming compact national groups, are in their turn subdivided into a large number of tribes, which have reached very different degrees of civilisation. Some, who have been brought within the influence of Europeans either on the seaboard or on the plantations of the interior, are comparatively cultured, while others dwelling on the plateaux, or in the more remote upland villages, have remained in the savage state. Of all the Bundas, the Ba-Nano or "Highlanders," so naitied in contradistinction to the Ba-Bwero or " Lowlanders," have best preserved the racial purity and the primitive usages. Tlie term Ba-Nano (Nanno) is, however, extended by some writers in a collective sense to the whole nation. Referring to the traditions of the Bundas who occupy the hilly region lying south of the Cuanza, Magyar states that these tribes came from the north-east about the middle of the sixteenth century. Their ancestors, who were fierce cannibals, were constantly waging war against all the surrounding tribes in order to procure human prey, and when they had no longer any enemies to fall upon