It looks as if the South-African languages had separated from the Negro tongues by making the prefixes and their grammatical agreement the predominant trait of their languages, while the languages of Soudan show only germs of such formation. Certainly such languages as the Odshi, 'Yoruba, Bullom, and Tinme are intermediate between the Negro and Bantu stocks.
We can thus determine the Negro district on the south: those nations in whose languages the syntax is based on the agreement of the prefixes belong to the Bantu stock, and those whose languages do not show this agreement, even though they otherwise make use of the prefixes, belong to the Negroes.
It is far more difficult to draw the boundary of the Negro territory on the north and east. Even in historical times the Negroes have occupied tracts of land more to the north than at present: we find them spread throughout the oases of the desert as far as to the Atlas Mountains, from which they were gradually driven by Berber tribes. The Tedas (Tebus, Tibbus), a Negro tribe, have maintained their place as far north as Fezzan even to the present day. Naturally, as a consequence, intermixtures of various kinds have occurred in the north, even with the Arabian conquerors. Toward the east the Negroes come in contact with the Nubian, the Abyssinian, and the Galla nations. What makes an ethnological division so diffi cult on this side is the gradual passing over of one national type into the other.
The boundaries are vague or entirely absent. This holds good as to the physique, as to customs and usages (comp., for instance, ,61. 92, fig. 20; j51. 99, fig. 2, with pl. 84, fig. 2; pi. 86, fig. 2; pi. Ioo, fig. 1, with pl. 9S, fig. 6, and pi. Too, fig. 5), and as to language. Some of the Central African idioms show much similarity to those of North-east Africa, even with the Semitic languages. To this, for example, belong the manner in which the personal pronoun is inseparably prefixed to the verb in the Hausa, Kanuri, and Tibbu, and the suffixing of the possessive pronoun and the union of the pronominal object with the verb: for example, in Hausa: 2 la !off, "'Her 'brother 'walked ;" 'Na- 2 ba ka,"'I 'give you." It is still more striking that in the Kanuri and the Tibbu the sign of the person of independent verbs is prefixed in the third person, but otherwise suffixed: Kanuri, 'Audi 'di- `do however, 'Nandi 3 They they-) The Hausa makes even a precise distinction as to gender, and has dif ferent forms in the second and third persons of the verb for the masculine and feminine subject: Baba, gives;" taba, gives." However,
these tongues so closely coincide in their most important traits with the remaining Negro idioms that they cannot be separated from them. The strangest transitions are found toward the north-east, and they are very difficult to explain.
But this is not all. In the interior of Soudan we find a number of tribes which, related among themselves, are very unlike the Negroes in their physique, and are distinguished from them by all writers. These are the Fulah, Peul (p1. 91, figs. 6, 7, ro, r r), who are called Fellani in Hausa, Fellatah in Bornu (p1. 92, fig-. 3), and Fula]] in Mandingo: pia means " light brown "—therefore or the brown ones"— and from these plural forms the above names have been derived.
The Fulah dwell along the middle and upper part of the Senegal and the Gambia, from Futa-Toro to Futa-Jalon; they have spread through the districts between the great curve of the Niger as far as Timbnetoo, also from the district of Yoruba throughout Hausa, where they are very power ful, as also in Bonin. They extend to Adamawa south of the Benue and to Waday; their extreme eastern point is Darfur, perhaps even some tracts on the White Nile. Consequently, wherever we find Negroes we also have the Fulah; and it is natural that we should find many transitional forms between them and the Negroes proper as the results of intermingling.
But it becomes more difficult to comprehend that gradual transition between the Negro and Fulah types should be observed where the Fulah live without intermingling, and that some unmixed Negro tribes should resemble them in stature and color. Here language must pronounce the decision. Their tongue is remarkable. We find again the prefixing of dependent pronouns to the verb, and the annexing of suffixes to denote the tense: ,,2 we 2 e ) is the past tense. Even traces of distinction of genders are noticeable in the verb (Barth).