Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/350

292 WEST AFRICA. are tlie Bambara Negroes, wlio call themselves Ba-Manao (Ba-Mana), or " People of the Great Eock." Traditionally from the southern highlands, they belong to the same stock as the Mandingans, and speak fundamentally the same language. But they are physically a. very mixed people, described by some as even typical Negroes, by others as characterised by thin lips and aquiline nose. From all their neighbours they are distinguished by three parallel incisions traced on the cheek from the angle of the eye to the corner of the mouth. The Bambaras are also an industrial people, skilful blacksmiths, manufacturers of gunpowder, ropes, and cordage, builders of boats, bridges, and well-constructed wooden houses, usually of rectangular shape, with gutters for carrying off the rain-water, and apertures to let the smoke escape. Like the Wassulus, they are gentle, hospitable, and generous, harbouring no malice and easily given to laughter, exceeding all other natives in boisterous merriment. But although renowned for their valour, and as implacable in war as they are mild in peace, the Bambaras have everywhere been subdued by other nations, in the Upper Joliba valleys by the Fulahs and Mandingans, in French Sudan by a handful of whites, on the opposite side of the Niger and in Kaarta by the Toucouleurs. A few small tribes between Kaarta and Bele-dugu can alone be regarded as completely independent. Nearly all the Bambaras, at least of Kaarta, call themselves Mohammedans, but are so little zealous that their Toucouleur masters look upon them as no better than Kafirs. Many of their tribes, after recovering their political independence, have even abandoned the rites of Islam, resuming the pagan ceremonies and profane amusements of their ancestors. At their feasts they get drunk on dolo and eat the flesh of dogs or jackals to show their hatred of the oppressor's religion. Thus Mohammedanism, which is so rapidly advancing in other parts of Africa, is losing ground amongst the Bambaras as well as the Kuranko's. Certain secret societies also still celebrate their rites in the forests, and most of the people have their fetishes — roots, rags, tufts of hair, or the like, kept in an ox's horn, in an elephant's tusk, or more frequently in a calabash or a large earthenware pot, the round form and yellow colour of which represent the sun, creator of all things. Sometimes this vase contains a coiled snake, emblem of a world without beginning or end ; when empty it is approached with still greater awe, for then it is the abode of the unknown god. Topography. In the Upper Joliba basin even the capitals of states are mostly mere groups of huts, such as Ndia and Tantafara, close to the source of the river ; Lia, at the confluence of the branches forming the Joliba ; Faranna, on the right bank, 120 miles below the source, which at the time of Winwood Reade's visit was a mere heap of ruins. Galaha, near the head of the Janda, was the usual residence of Sultan Saraory in 1881 ; but in 1885 it had been replaced by Sanankoro, lying farther north, as the summer capital, and by Bissandu, lower down, as his winter