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Three great elements are, however, clear: first, the Egyptian element, by the northward migration of the Negro ancestors of predynastic Egypt and the southern conquests and trade of dynastic Egypt; second, the Semitic influence from Arabia and Persia; third, the Negro influences from western and central Africa. The migration of the Bantu is the first clearly defined movement of modern times.
The best men among these are lawyers, doctors, and merchants, and I have known many ladies of Africa who have risen to an equal culture level with their lords. On the West African seaboard you do not find the Bantu equally advanced, except among the M'pongwe, and I am persuaded that this tribe is not pure Bantu but of Negro origin.
To my surprise they came straight to me, and, having set down the baskets, lifted their hands above their heads, as a person about to dive might do, and bowed till the points of their fingers touched the floor. Next they spoke, not in Arabic as I had expected that they would, but in Bantu, which of course I understood perfectly well.
he also, we may be sure, thought of his own kind, but to me, again, the beautiful words, which usage cannot cheapen, express the wonder I have often felt at the wealth of imagery, the mental grasp, the wisdom and the natural dignity in very many untutored natives I have met with, and it is this experience which makes me believe that the present difference between the Europeans and the Native race is one of degree and not of kind, and that, in the fullness of time, achievement will follow the latent genius with which, as I hold, nature has endowed, in equal degree with ourselves, the great Bantu branch of the human family.
It is not very easy to believe that Nyam, under all his names, was picked up from the Portuguese, and passed apparently from negroes to Bantu all over West Africa, despite the isolation of the groups, and the resistance of the priesthood among tribes 'uninfluenced by any higher race.
I believe a more thorough knowledge would show us that there is among the Bantu also a fixed time for the lingering of the soul on earth after death, but we have not got sufficient evidence on the point yet. The only thing we know is that it is not proper for the widow to re-marry while her husband's soul is still in her vicinity.
The remaining member of my retinue was a Bantu boy named 'Ngulubi, about sixteen years of age, who acted as voorlouper, or leader of the front span of oxen of the team.
Miss Kingsley, a lively, observant, and unprejudiced, though rambling writer, gives this very account of the Bantu races. Oblivion, or neglect, will show itself in leaving the Supreme Being alone, as he needs no propitiation, while devoting sacrifice and ritual to fetishes and ghosts.
Assuming that the capacity for acquiring Western education and civilisation is no greater in the American Negroes than in the Bantu we may note the opinion of a recent student of the race question in America, as being in point here. In his book "Children of the Slaves," Mr. Stephen Graham says "The fact is, Negrodom has to a great extent qualified to vote.
In a sense Harût admitted this to me, for suddenly he looked up and said in a changed voice and in Bantu: "You are a good reader of hearts, O Macumazana, almost as good as I am. But remember that there is One Who writes upon the book of the heart, Who is the Lord of us who do but read, and that what He writes, that will befall, strive as we may, for in His hands is the future."
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