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422
AFRICAN PROPERTY
chap.

to me, he has in the regions he has conquered in Southern and Central Africa, adopted Bantu, and much the same thing has happened, and is still happening, there, as happened in Southern and Central Europe. Just as the powerful barbarian stocks adopted Latin in a way that must keep Priscian's head still in bandages and to this day seriously mar his happiness in the Elysian fields, so have the true Negroes adopted the flexible Bantu languages. But it would be as unscientific to regard a Spaniard or a Frenchman as a full-blooded ancient Roman, as to regard many of the Negro tribes now speaking Bantu language as Bantu men.

The Negro has, moreover, not only adopted Bantu languages in some regions, such as the Mpongwe, for example, but he has also adopted to a certain extent Bantu culture. I am sure those of you who have lived among the true Negroes and true Bantu, will agree with me that these cultures differ materially. Africa, so far as I know it, namely, from Sierra Leone to Benguela, smells generally rather strong, but particularly so in those districts inhabited by the true Negro. This pre-eminence the true Negroes attain to by leaving the sanitary matters of villages and towns in the hands of Providence. The Bantu culture looks after the cleaning and tidying of the village streets to a remarkable degree, though by no means more clean in the houses, which, in both cultures, are quite as clean and tidy as you will find in England. Again, in the Bantu culture you will find the slaves living in villages apart: inside the true Negro they live with their owners; and there are other points which mark the domestic cultures of these people as being different from each other, which I need not detain you with now. All these points in Bantu domestic culture the true