(7) The Galla nations, to which the Somalis and the Danakil (north-west of Bab-el-Mandeb) are related, constitute the seventh branch. The Somalis are divided into two large classes—the northern Ed/Jr and the southern Dam& tribes, to which latter belong the Mid sherthains, the extreme eastern people, living as far east as Cape Gardafui. The extreme western Gallas are the Limmous, dwelling in Kaffa ( Joinard). We also include the lumales (more to the north), and in the extreme south, on the second degree of south latitude, the Eloikobs (\Vakuafi in Snaheli), whose language belongs to the Semitic class, though to its extreme limits.
We have now finished the enumeration, but before proceeding some remarks are necessary. The old and now extinct language of the Ethio pians, the Geez, like the chief living Ethiopian languages, the Tigre and the Amharic, is decidedly a Semitic language closely related to the Himyaritic language of the South Arabians, and its introduction, although not ascertained, must have taken place in an historically calcu lable time before Christ. However, we must class the Geez people among the African Semites when we take an ethnologic view of them.
The philological difficulty of separating the Geez from the surround ing African tribes becomes an impossibility when their physique, their customs, and their whole manner of living are taken into view ; a11 of which, to use Ritter's words, constitute them a people distinct from the Arabians. Nor do we hesitate to class ethnologically among the African Semites the different Arabian tribes of North Africa, which have been living for centuries in Nubia and south of Nubia, as well as in the Desert as far as the Niger and the Senegal, because their appearance and the entire complexion of their life stamp them as Africans. But it is difficult
to draw a clear boundary, for just as the Negroes and Bantu shade into the Semites, so do the African Semites pass into those of Asia.
We also find in Arabia tribes which belong, according to language, to the inferior African Semites. Such are the tribes living in South Arabia, speaking the and in the east the independent dialect of Dhafar, as also many despised castes of the country, such as the Achdam, the Shumurs, and others, whose language, while not Arabian, shows but little affinity to the Ethiopian (Maltzan). Halevy, a French scientist, has discovered that the is very like the Berber and Egyptian idioms. The Mahra and all the tribes mentioned cannot be immigrants; wherefore it follows that the aboriginal inhabitants of Arabia —indeed, probably all the oldest tribes of the Semites, the aboriginal Semites—stood on that linguistic step on which we at present find most of the African Semites.
Physically, the Achdam and Shumurs are more remote from the type of the Arabians, but mach like the natives of North Africa, as is clearly seen from Maltzan's description: skin blackish ; nose broad, not flat ; mouth large, not everted; hair frizzled, long; stature average. Still, we do 110i class them among the African, but rather among the Asiatic Semites, of whom they constitute themost ancient form. From peoples like them the present Semites, who have developed so high above them, have descended. At present their whole manner of living, as well as their surroundings, is entirely Semitic.