Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/343

 the negro races in the so-called Soudan, the Fellahs inclosed between the negroes and reaching from east to west in a straight line, and the central races spread from the north and northeast to the equator.

Of these five races, the first four only can be regarded as autochthonous, while the last, comprising well-established groups, migrated from Asia.

The Hottentots were formerly the exclusive inhabitants of southeasterly parts of Africa, from the Cape up to 18° or 19° south latitude. They were driven from their settlements by the invading Caffres streaming from the north, and at first were pressed back into the most southerly regions, and then later from this extremity northward along the west coast until they fixed themselves in the districts they now occupy. The northern neighbors of the Hottentots, the Caffres, are not aboriginal in the southern country, where at present they most numerously exist, but have immigrated here. They settled originally farther north, and stood in close relations for a long period with the Hamitic peoples, which migrated from Asia, as is clearly shown by their idioms. Since by reason of their type and intimate relationship they could not, for any length of time, have been separated by their primitive languages, which were continually approximating, they may have formed an individual group at the time of the invasion of the Hamites from the north into Africa; but they exhibit, in fact, so close points of resemblance with the Hamitic idioms that, without attributing this to direct contact, the coincidence appears inexplicable. Besides this drift from the north to the south, which is established from already ascertained facts, another from east to west diagonally across the continent was later instituted. From this circumstance it happens that the language of many stocks in the extreme northwest of the Caffre area show the most intimate relationship with those of the extreme northeast—a relationship not to be accounted for by a reference of both to the primitive tongue common to the Caffre or Bantu tribes, but completely through derivation from a branch of this original speech.

That the Fellah races are not aboriginal in those regions which they at present occupy is proved by their distribution among the negro races. Such a stratification of two races can not be aboriginal, but indicates distinct migrations of each. According to our view, the Fellah originally settled north of the negroes, probably in the territory now possessed by the Berbers, and pressed from the northwest into the land occupied by them, whence they spread toward the east to Nubia. This opinion is confirmed by the close relationship of the Fellah races with the central tribes, which appears to demonstrate an intermixture, as also by the many points of resemblance which the Fellah idioms offer to the Hamitic tongue.

That the individual peoples into which the negro race is divided have undertaken many migrations is at the very outset established by