negroes, and in the centre by negroes of a low type and by Forest Pygmies;
the eastern coasts of Victoria Nyanza and the East African coast region
down to opposite Zanzibar probably had a population partly Nilotic-negro
and partly Hottentot-Bushman. From Lakes Tanganyika and Nyasa
south-westwards to the Cape of Good Hope the population was Forest-negro,
Nilotic-negro, Hottentot and Bushman. Over nearly all this area the Bantu
swept; and they assimilated or absorbed the vast majority of the preceding
populations, of which, physically or linguistically, the only survivors are
the scattered tribes of pygmies in the forests of south-west Nile land,
Congo basin and Gabun, the central Sudanese of the N.E. Congo, a few
patches of quasi-Hottentot, Hamitic and Nilotic peoples between Victoria
Nyanza and the Zanzibar coast, and the Bushmen and Hottentots of south-west
Africa. The first area of decided concentration on the part of the Bantu
was very probably Uganda and the shores of Tanganyika. The main line of
advance south-west trended rather to the east coast of Africa than to the
west, but bifurcated at the south end of Lake Tanganyika, one great branch
passing west between that lake and Nyasa, and the other southwards.
Finally, when the Bantu had reached the [v.03 p.0357] south-west corner of
Africa, their farther advance was checked by two causes: first, the
concentration in a healthy, cattle-rearing part of Africa of the Hottentots
(themselves only a superior type of Bushman, but able to offer a much
sturdier resistance to the big black Bantu negroes than the crafty but
feeble Bushmen), and secondly, the arrival on the scene of the Dutch and
British, but for whose final intervention the whole of southern Africa
would have been rapidly Bantuized, as far as the imposition of language was
concerned.

The theory thus set forth of the origin and progress of the Bantu and the
approximate date at which their great southern exodus commenced, is to some
extent attributable to the present writer only, and has been traversed at
different times by other writers on the same subject. In the nearly total
absence of any historical records, the only means of building up Bantu
history lies in linguistic research, in the study of existing dialects, of
their relative degree of purity, of their connexion one with the other and
of the most widely-spread roots common to the majority of the Bantu
languages. The present writer, relying on linguistic