Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 25, 1914.djvu/487

 Traditions of tJic Baganda and Jhishongo. 453

peoples who have emigrated to call the rivers and other natural objects of their new territory by the place-names of the old country." Does Mr. Torday really think that this strengthens his conclusion, that " it is very likely therefore that the Bushongo came originally from the neighbourhood of the Shari basin, breaking their way through the Mongo and the Basongo Meno to the Sankuru " t Shari or Chale is simply a widespread word for river. ^5 He adduces also by way of further proof the cultural evidence of the traditions concerning their food, their nakedness and the use of the throwing knife. As Sir Harry Johnston points out, Soudanese cultural influence is found in the Congo basin ;-^ but it is by no means confined to the Bushongo, and can liardly be taken as a special corroboration of the Bushongo traditions. According to him, the Hima physical t)-pe is nowhere more marked than among the Bushongo.-' Now the Hima invasions entered the Congo from the east. They were part of the westerly movement of the Hamitic race still dominant around the Victoria Nyanza. If Sir Harry Johnston be right, how could the Bushongo have come from the north-north-west } Mr. Torday, however, does not find traces of Hima blood in them ; he seeks their racial, as well as their cultural, affinities in a different quarter. For he proceeds to explain the legend that Bumba (the Creator), Loko Yima and his daughter Lobamba were white, while the naughty Woto was a mulatto, by supposing that some central Soudanese tribe had submitted voluntarily or by force to a chief of Jierber blood, and had afterwards formed the advance-guard of the people that invaded the Welle country under the name of Azande. This is pure surmise, and goes a very little wa)' to support the historical character of a tradition admitted to be mythical, and differing on important points from the tradition of the other branches of the Bushongo.

'* Johnston, George Greiijell, 143 n., 286 n. '^'' Ibid. , 798 sqq. 27 jf,id^ ^515,