THE SOUDANESE STATES 8i confusingly different number of names ; but the name of its principal town, and the name by which the territory itself was most generally known in the first days of its medieval prosperity, was Ghana or Ghanata. At a later date the territory was called Walata, and the principal town became Aiwalatin.

We are told that white kings had reigned over Ghana before the year of the Hegira ; but when the Arabs visited the country in the eighth century they found it in the possession of a black monarch, to whom the Berbers or white people of the more northerly desert towns paid tribute. The town of Ghana lay towards the eastern portion of this district, and at one time the territory over which it ruled extended to the sea.

The district to the south-west of the Senegal, between that river and the sea, is regarded by early writers as the original place of settlement of the Fulani in Africa. The Djolfs, who inhabited it during the Arab period, are described in the Tarikk-es- Soudan as "the best of men."

** By their acts and their character," the author says, **they differ essentially from all the other Fulanis. God by a special grace has endowed them with a generous nature, and He inspires in them fine actions and conduct worthy of all praise. For valour and bravery they have no equal. . . . In all that we have ever heard about them, loyalty and fidelity to their engagements appear to be innate, and to have reached the highest expression in them." It will be noticed that this praise of the Djolfs is given at the implied expense of '* all other Fulanis." There can be no doubt that from the beginning of their history there has been a wide variation in the endowments of this people. They are, however, so remarkable, and from our earliest knowledge of them have maintained the character of their own race so exclusively of the life and history of the other races of the Soudan, that the account of their progress as a ruling power from the extreme western corner upon the Atlantic coast, in which we first hear of them, to the eastern regions between the Niger F