158 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY But the history of the dwarfs is hidden from us as completely as the history of the magicians. If the dwarfs of the Congo forest ever did inhabit the vicinity of Gao, all that we know of them now is that, in common with other lower types of black humanity, they were driven by superior pressure from the north, backwards and southwards towards the equator. As for the magicians and the link which they may have been supposed to establish between the contemporary history of Kaougha and the Egypt of the Pharaohs — if the tradition of this is preserved in the annals of Egypt, it is all that we have. Knowledge of the country in which they lived vanishes, alas, in that chapter of Songhay civilisation which is lost to us. The religion of Egypt, the art of Egypt, the intellectual fertility of Egypt, even the policy of Egypt, while they are at times to be traced as a tradition carried in the blood of this half of the Western Soudan, and expressing itself unconsciously in customary life, offer yet a scarcely more definite outline to description than the impression of a ghostly hand laid by the past upon the present, and visible in short glimpses only to the eyes of faith.

It is perhaps most continuously observable in the physical characteristics of the Songhay race. Their skin is black like that of the negro, but there is otherwise nothing negroid in their appearance. A modern writer, who has had ample opportunity for observation, describes them thus : ''The nose of the Songhais is straight and long, pointed rather than flat ; the lips are comparatively thin, the mouth wide rather than prominent and thick ; while the eyes are deeply set and straight in the orbit. , . . It is to the south of the island of Philae that we find a similar race."

In speaking of the people of ancient Egypt, Herodotus informs us that they were ** black, with curly hair"; and though modern investigations of Egyptian monuments have led to the conclusion that there were three races, Felix Dubois, " Timbuctoo the Mysterious," p. 97, Eng. trans.