Page:George McCall Theal, Ethnography and condition of South Africa before A.D. 1505 (2nd ed, 1919).djvu/168

144 had spread along the southern border of the desert, various lighter coloured communities of Asiatic blood had settled south-west of the Red sea, and Bushmen occupied the remainder of the continent, except perhaps where a little horde of Hottentots tended their flocks somewhere between the gulf of Aden and Lake Tanganyika, and maybe highly skilled people, Arab and Indian, were delving for gold in the Rhodesia of our day. This is no sketch of fancy, but what must have been, or the condition of Africa past and present is altogether unexplainable.

The band of immigrants conquered a section of the earlier inhabitants, and incorporated its girls, possibly some of its boys also, but destroyed all the others. Then, after a time, it separated into two or more tribes, each of which pursued a distinct career of conquest, one incorporating Asiatic girls, another negro girls, still another girls of Bushman blood. The tribes increased, and fought with each other, some were destroyed, others grew stronger and stronger, and pushed their way ever southward, where there were no other people than Bushmen to oppose them. The principal line of migration was down the eastern coast, and so when a tribe moving down the centre of the continent reached the region of the great lakes, the Hottentots were obliged to flee to the south-west. In that direction the advance of the Bantu was much slower than on the other side of the continent, for there is every indication that the lower bank of the Zambesi was reached long before the valley of the Congo was occupied.

It is possible that Arabic or Indian documents may some day be discovered which will throw light upon the migration of the Bantu down the eastern coast. At present much information from books concerning any part of the continent south of the Sahara, or of the people occupying it in ancient times, cannot be obtained. The following is all that the author of this volume has been able to gather:

Dr. Budge, in his valuable work on Egypt already mentioned, gives an account of the raising of an army of black men in the valley of the Nile above Nubia 3233 years before the commencement of the Christian era, but whether those black men had, or had not, any connection with the Bantu there are no means of