320 Ethnology of the Anglo-Egyptian Siulan, from tiis work, for he left at the crucial point several non-Arabic names, and few, if any, Sudanese pedigrees ai accepted by Muslim genealogists elsewhere.

At this point the Arabization of Central Sudan seems to have stood almost still for three centuries. Gubbas were built and Fikis became powerful, but the tribal organization, although indigenous among the Begas, did not supplant the very different political division of the land into small kingdoms tributary to Sennar. The emblems of kingly power, a throne called the K-K-R and a two-horned cap (Naum II, pp. 100, 101), are also clearly African, not Arab. Burkhardt, again, who knew the Arabs in Syria and Arabia, is never tired of contrasting their manners and morals with those of the Sudanese Arabs.

This period was closed by the Egyptian conquest of Mohammed Ali, which continued the process begun in the time of Selim, and finally obUterated several of the most characteristic survivals from pre-Islamic days. Indeed, all the events of the last century, including the great upheaval in which it culminated, had the same tendency. Having lost their nativ.? kingdoms, the people have been forced to adopt the Arab tribal system, and, unlike the Berbers in Algiers, have identified themselves enthusiastically with all things Arab. The more striking is it that they should have still kept such African customs as the Akh-el-banat, the scarring of the cheeks, female excision,* all alien from the true Arab of Arabia.

If this reading of history be accepted, the people of the Central Sudan will be described as a mixed race recently forced into an Arab mould and in varying degrees modified by Arab blood. And we may prophesy that future researches will prove the other elements in this race to be akin to the other races on its borders, to the Nubians and Begas on the north, to the Negroes, Gallas, Abyssinians, etc., on the south and south-east.

In the above sketch there are so many necessary gaps, and so many controverted points of necessity passed over in silence, that it seems fair to the reader to give a brief statement of a different theory recently put forward by Sir H. H. Johnston on this subject. We therefore append a rdsumd of his views compiled by Captain Morant from " The Nile Quest" :— In pre-historic times the land on each side of the Red Sea is said to have joined in the south as well as in the north. By these necks of land man came to Africa from Asia in the form of dwarfs of a very low negroid type, resembling the now much-advanced pigmy of the Congo or the bushraan of South Africa. Thus perhaps, say, 10,000 years ago, the Nile basin south of N. latitude 15° was peopled by a negroid species from the east. It seems also not improbable that Egypt proper and Arabia were within the domains of this negroid race.

These indigenous pigmies appear to have been at an early date ousted (say 9,000 years ago) by races of Caucasian stock resembling the Dravidians of India, of aquiline type, possibly of nearly pure Caucasian " Khafra " origin, and probably emanating from Syria, Cyprus, or Libya.

In Gallaland, Somaliland, and Abyssinia a handsome race of Caucasian ancestry, mingled no doubt with protonegroes and Dravidians, formed originally in Southern Arabia, sprang up. The lips of this people, destined to become the basis of a world-renowned and historic type, were full and their noses straight and finely shaped, whilst their skin was dark and their hair had a tendency to curl, and like the modern Somali, Galla, or Danakil, the men grew thin and wedge-shaped beards.

It was by emigrants of this new Hamitic race to the Lower Nile Basin that the stock of the ruling type of ancient Egyptians was formed. In the latter, nevertheless, an appreciable amount of Negro blood from the early Negro population mu.st doubtless have been absorbed.

So degraded and transformed, however, has been the ancient Egyptian type by the infusion of the blood of their many successive rulers, that though facial resemblances may remain, their famous characteristics have vanished, and the Egyptian of to-day is the descendant of Slavs and Turks, Arabs, Armenians, and Circassians.

But it was not only to Egypt that this Hamitic race extended, but also, though more faint-heartedly, towards the negroid districts to the south-west to Uganda, Zululand, and even it is thought to the Atlantic. In Uganda their descendants are now distinctly traceable.

To recapitulate : — -The country of Ethiopia, which included not only the highlands of Abyssinia but also the country north, to Berber or even Dongola, was probably originally populated by a very low type of pigmy or bushman, then perhaps partially by a race of big black negroes, such as Shilluk, Dinka, Nuer, and Bari, which in turn gave way to the Hamitic race already described. The ruling class of Ethiopia, however (the present " Abyssinian " in contradistinction to the "Galla or Somali"), became of Semitic origin through the Sabasan Arab conquest of Aby8.sinia some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago.

* Mentioned in Strabo and Makrizi. To these African customs in vogue anionc; the Sudanese " Arabs" may be added the Dilka and the Tadkhin. The fonner is their metliod of cleaning themselves : instead of washing they prefer, like the ancient Greeks, first to grease themselves over and then scrape the skin with a stone or other scraper. For the Tadkhin, ser Biker, " Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia," p. 81.