376 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY They are known to this day in Northern Nigeria under the name of Cow Fulani. Mungo Park also says of the Foulahs, ** They are naturally mild and gentle. . . . They evidently consider all the negro nations as their inferiors, and when talking of different nations always rank themselves among white peoples. . . . They are Mussulmans, and the authority and laws of the prophet are everywhere looked upon as sacred and decisive." He tells us that, in his day, they possessed in the Soudan many kingdoms at great distances from each other, and he notices the diversity of their appearance. ** Their complexion, however, is not quite the same in the different districts. In kingdoms which are situated in the vicinity of the Moorish territories (meaning to the north), they are of a more yellow complexion than in the southern states." He mentions the fact that they have a separate language, and gives specimens of its vocabulary. Francis Moore, speaking of the Fulani of the Gambia in 1734, gives them much the same character as that given them by Mungo Park. "They have chiefs of their own," he says, "who rule with so much moderation, that every act of government seems rather an act of the people than of one man." He also speaks of their charitable and humane qualities. Dr. Blyden, writing of them in the present day, tells us that every man and woman among them can at least read Arabic.

Denham, writing a little later than Mungo Park, gives us a description of another class of Foulah or Fulani as he met them on the shores of Lake Chad. " They are," he says, *' a very handsome race of people, of a deep copper colour, who seldom mix their blood with that of the negroes, have a peculiar language of their own, and are Moslem." These were the conquerors of Bornu, aristocrats and military rulers. He says of them in another place that they resembled the inhabitants of Tetuan in Morocco. He also finds in them a resemblance to the gypsies in England. But a Foulah whom he met in one of the border towns of Bornu told him, he says,