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On the islands the Asiatics were independent, but on the main lands south of Kilwa the sheiks ruled only their own people, under the overlordship of the Bantus, to whom they were compelled to pay large tribute each year. Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 and went north on the east coast as far as India.
The ownership of children is a great source of palaver. The law among Negroes and Bantus is that the children of a free woman belong to her. In the case of tribes believing in the high importance of uncles considerable powers are vested in that relative, while in other tribes certain powers are vested in the father.
The distinction between these two great groups is not based upon special differences as to physical structure, mental characteristics, habits, or development, but depends solely upon philological considerations, the languages of the Negroes and the Bantus forming two distinct groups.
He found the Indian Sea at that time frequented by Arab and Persian vessels, but there were no Asiatic settlements on the African shore. The Bantu, or as he calls them, Zenji, inhabited the country as far south as Sofala, where they bordered upon the Bushmen. These Bantus were under a ruler with the dynastic title of Waklimi.
Any one who has occupied himself with the polysynthetic tongues of the Redskins, or with the prefixes in the languages of the Bantus, knows how much time must have been needed to develop their grammar, and how much higher the makers of these languages must have stood than those who speak them now.
They were magnificent men, all of them; tall, spare and shapely with very clear-cut features and rather frizzled hair. From these characteristics, as well as the lightness of their colour, I concluded that they were of a Semitic or Arab type, and that the admixture of their blood with that of the Bantus was but slight, if indeed there were any at all.
McIver's theory, that the Temple was the work of Bantus a few hundred years ago, I think we may put the fact that an admirable drainage system has been unearthed; drainage systems of any kind being more or less unknown to black races of a low order.
Von Luschan: Verhandlungen der berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, etc., 1898. Frobenius: Voice of Africa, Vol. Cf. p. 58. Keane: Africa, II, 117-118. The Congo, I, Chap. Harris: Dawn in Africa. We have already seen how a branch of the conquering Bantus turned eastward by the Great Lakes and thus reached the sea and eventually both the Nile and South Africa.
They are difficult to procure, because none of the present towns are on really old sites, the Bubi, like most Bantus, moving pretty frequently, either because the ground is witched, demonstrated by outbreaks of sickness, or because another village-full of his fellow creatures, or a horrid white man plantation-making, has come too close to him.
So pretending to be perfectly unaware of his non-responsive attitude, she ran airily on: "Such a mad idea to travel hundreds of miles to see a few old remains of a doubtful edifice, built by Bantus! or is the plural Bantams?... I'm sure when you heard we were coming you wondered if you had better prepare a dwelling for us with padded walls.
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