THE PEOPLES OF SOUDAN.
part of Ethnology is more difficult than that which treats of the Negro. We have indeed on one side a boundary-line sepa rating the Bantu nations from the Negroes, but other difficulties oppose a precise classification.
First, the physical type. The Hottentots and the Caffirs are indeed physically different from the tribes along the Senegal and the Gambia; but, on the other hand, Schweinfurth finds the appearance of the equatorial dwarf people, the Akkas, so like that of the Bushmen that he scarcely dares decide whether they ought not to be put into one ethnological division with them. So the north-western and north-eastern Bantu nations often exhibit so great a likeness that to distinguish them by their physical peculiarities is scarcely possible. Second, language does not serve as a distinction. Vidal, Bleck, Norris, and other competent students of the African languages and peoples number the languages along the Old Calabar River and the Yoruba, the Ashantee, even the Billion] and other tongues of the coast of Sierra Leone, among the Bantu languages, and consequently the inhabitants among the Bantu nations.
La Irv' age. —An investigation of the Tirane language (Sierra Leone) and of the Ashantee dialects shows the same structure in them as in those of Congo and Mozambique. In the Odshi, which is spoken by the Ashan tees, we find the same division of substantives into certain classes, the first consisting of collective words, the second comprising individuals, either neuter and inanimate or personal and animate; and these classes are distinguished by certain prefixes, and prefixes also form the plural of each of the classes mentioned. Thus, is " water;" " tuft of hair;" " a pair of sandals;" " butterfly;" " chair;" " sheep;" " woman;" is at the same time the plural form for (grammatically) inanimate objects: to, "butterflies;" while the class with the prefix o forms the plural with a, thus The tenses also are formed by prefixes which come immediately after the pronoun: m " I walk," but ' "' 'have (sign of the perfect tense) 'walked." The structure of the Bantu verb is exactly like
this: 2 3 jienda, "'I have (sign of the perfect The addition of various suffixes to the noun (for instance, to form diminutives) and to the verb (for the formation of cases, etc.) is in the Odshi much the same as in the Bantu tongues; and if we find no likeness of roots in these two districts, this is of no significance in the ethnologic relation of lan guages, as we have already explained. The original connection of the lan guages is only removed to an earlier period. Thus it seems that we ought to assume with Bleck a relation between the Odshi and the Bantu lan The Ehwe language along the Slave Coast and the Yoruba are rather closely related to the Odshi, while the Yoruba exhibits the same phe nomena as the Odshi. We find in the Bliwe the same fundamental traits, but undeveloped: the nouns are distinguished from the verbs by a vowel prefix, a or c, between which no definite distinction can be made. Many additions are made in forming substantives, and suffixes are also of import ance in the formation of verbs. Almost all the forms of the languages of Soudan—the Vei, the Mande, etc.—are by suffixes, so that the languages of this territory, in contrast with the southern prejix languages, have been called suffix languages. The .1.211eve exhibits the peculiarities of both.
The use of prefixes to form substantives is found in other Central African languages, as in the Volof in Senegambia, and also in the east, in the Kanuri in the northern and western vicinity of Lake Chad, where abstract words (and, as in the Bantu languages, the so-called infinitive) are formed by prefixes, the same languages a number of other forms with suffixes. The employment of prefixes is found at various places in Soudan, but it lacks one trait which unites the Bautu languages and forms their vital principle: the agreement of these prefixes in the forms of words logically belonging together, the adjective and the verb taking the same prefix as the noun.