i66 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER Barth about the people who once dwelt in the great empire named after them.

To add to what these great authorities have said would be mere waste of time. I must remark here, however, that I was struck by the fact that lower down the Niger the Songhay have taken the name of Djerma, which is that of the district and its inhabitants where they now dwell.

This name Djerma is also that of the North African oasis which was known to the ancients as Garama, or the land of the Garamantes. The resemblance between the two cannot fail to strike every one. I wonder whether the two words Djerma and Garama have the same origin ? and if the Garamantic race, or, as it is also sometimes called, the Sub-Ethiopian, may not have been the primitive source of all the negro tribes which now people the Western Sudan.

If it be so, the greater number of the ethnic revolutions which have convulsed the country have really after all been merely a struggle for ascendency between three races — the Negro, which I have just been discussing ; the Berber, of which the Tuaregs are the purest representatives ; and lastly, the so-called Fulah race, which came from the east, and may possibly be descended from the ancient Egyptians.

I give my idea for what it is worth, whilst waiting for a more exhaustive study to be made of local dialects or the discovery of ancient manuscripts which shall throw a clearer light on the subject.

The Songhay empire of Garo, which was at one time so splendid, had within itself the germs of its own decay, for its chiefs were Mussulmans. The polygamy permitted by Islam gives to each one of them in his numerous descendants a perfect legion of possible rivals ready to dethrone him and usurp his power. It is to this, and yet more to the hateful morality of the Mahommedans, always ready to