Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/430

360 WEST AFEIOA. Makari, but of mucli ruder habits, wearing nothing but a leather apron about the loins, treating their horses with atrocious cruelty, and slaying their prisoners by chopping off one leg and letting them bleed to death. The women insert bone or metal plates in both lips, which in conversation add a strange clapping sound to their harsh guttural language. In the hilly region west of the Musgos, between Bornu and Adamawa, dwell other pagans, such as the Marghi, worshippers of Tunibi, whose abode is the finest and most wide-branching tree in the forest. With their southern neighbours, the Sani, they form a distinct race, whose dialects bear no resemblance to those of Bornu, and only a very faint affinity to those of the Musgos and Babirs. In some respects these idioms would seem to form the transition between the typical Kegro languages of Sudan and the Bantu family of South Africa. The Marghi are also a much finer race than the surrounding peoples, tall, symmetrical, Avith almost European features, crisp, but not woolly hair, and reddish or bronzed complexion. The Marghi have no villages, properly so-called, their dwellings being always isolated and surrounded by a plot of ground belonging to the family. But this arrangement exposes them all the more to the attacks of the slave-hunters, and when Barth came amongst them as a friend and not to raid, like all other strangers, they thought he must be some god who had appeared in their midst to make them for a moment forget the woes and terrors of life. They were formerly a very powerful nation, capable even in the middle of the present century of raising a force of thirty thousand warriors. They mourn only for their young men, rejoic- ing when the aged, weary of life, have been gathered to their fathers. Although reputed barbarians, the Marghi are in some respects more civilised than their neighbours ; thus they have long practised inoculation, scarcely known elsewhere in Bornu. In the extreme north-west dwell the Manga people, who are quite distinct from the Kanuri, and related perhaps to the So aborigines. They are a rude, half -savage race," who merge westwards with the Haussawa, and towards the south with other barbarous tribes, such as the Bedde, Ngizzem, Kerri-Xerri, Kka, and Babir, occupying the hilly borderland between Ilaussa and Bornu. In Bornu the Arabs are very numerous, those known by the name of Shoa, or Shua, numbering at least a hundred thousand. Althougl^ settled in the country for several generations, and often intermingled with the indigenous populations, they still speak the language of the Koran with remarkable purity. The largest tribe are the Salamats, settled in the Makari country west of the Shari river. Owing to the moist climate, the Arab population is certainly diminishing. They are no longer able to supply the numerous cavalry formerly placed at the service of the sultan, while the annual tribute of horses and butter has also considerably diminished. The Xanuri language, while intimately related on the one hand to the northern Teda, Daza, Baele, shows on the other certaitl surprising analogies with the Sudanese languages proper, such as the Ilaussa, So, and Baghirmi. In the Tsad basin it has become the dominant speech, everywhere superseding Arabic and all