378 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY Its first home in Africa would seem to have been the south-western corner between the Senegal and the Atlantic, in which, according to Herodotus and Strabo, the Phoenicians made their early settlements. As this was the remotest extremity of the western world known to the ancients, it follows as a matter of course that the original home of the Fulani is supposed to have been further east. It is indeed a disputed point whether their first movements in Africa were from west to east, or gradually in the first instance from east to west, and only later, within our own times, from west to east. One theory of their origin is that they are of the same Malayan or Polynesian stock as that which is believed to have colonised Madagascar. Another is that they came originally from Egypt, and this involves the assumption that their movement in Africa was a gradual advance from east to west. This theory would seem to be disproved by the fact that their language has no affinity to the languages of the Nile. It has also been sought to associate them with the Jews, but it has been shown that their language is still further removed from languages of Semitic origin than it is from the idiom of the Soudan. I do not know whether this objection would apply to the language of the Phoenicians, nor have I anywhere seen the theory of Phoenician descent scientifically examined. The theory which seems to be most generally received and most logically supported is that the fount of origin of the Fulani people must be sought in India. This is the opinion of M. de Lauture, who relates the legend of their origin, as he learned it in Darfur, to be that they sprang from the marriage of a Hindu, who entered the Soudan by way of Egypt, with the female of a chameleon. He takes the legend to mean that the Fulani were the outcome of a union of Hindu stock with different tribes of the Soudan, in this way accounting for the great diversity of their characteristics.

Dr. Thaly supports the Indian theory. He connects the Fulani with the gypsies of Europe, and traces both