CHAPTER XVII

ORIGIN OF THE FULANI

“The most interesting of all African tribes.... A distinct race.”—DR. BARTH, “Travels in Central Africa” (5-volume edition).

Of all the mysteries which lie hidden, or but half unveiled, within the bosom of the still mysterious Continent of Africa, there is none that presents a more absorbing or more fascinating interest than the origin of the race which has infused its individuality throughout inland Western Africa, and whose fertilising influence is visible from the banks of the Senegal to the Chad.

In the previous chapter it has, I venture to believe, been fairly established that the Fulani are indubitably associated with our earliest available records of Western Africa, and that, with the exception of Hanno’s narrative (touched upon presently), every important reference, spread over many centuries, to the portion of Western Africa between the tenth and twentieth parallels of North latitude, bears witness, directly or indirectly, to the presence of the Fulani within that region at a remote period.[123] Whence came this people, which differentiates so radically in colour, form, habits, customs and manners from the Negroes among whom they have settled, and which dominated in the valley of the Senegal as far back as the fourth century?

Their own legends; their complexion and structure; their mental development and physical characteristics, all point emphatically to the East as the cradle of the Fulani race; a “distinct race,” as Dr. Barth truly says, and not the bastard product which some would make out.

[Illustration: LOW-CASTE FULANI, WESTERN SUDAN]

Before attempting to piece together the various threads which in the aggregate amount, in my humble opinion, to a virtual demonstration, it may be well to state that the Eastern theory numbers opponents who, from their position and attainments, compel our attention. There are those who entertain the belief that the Fulani belong to the Berber stock. There are others who think—and this I cannot but regard as wildly improbable—that the Fulani are of Nigritic extraction. M. Marcel Dubois, the brilliant author of “Timbuctoo the Mysterious,”[124] whose treatment of the Fulani is anything but impartial, categorically denies the Eastern theory. “It was from the West,” he says, “from the Senegalese Adrar (Aderer of British maps), from the land of sand extending north of the Senegal that they came.” “The Foulbes,” he continues, “had been driven towards the Sudan, very probably when the Moors, expelled from Spain, invaded Adrar.” M. Dubois finds corroboration of his views in a passage of the _Tarik_ (which, being written by an Arab, is necessarily biased against the Fulani) to the effect that the “Foulbes originated in the country of Tischitt.” I venture, very respectfully, to differ from M. Dubois. According to Leo, the Moors or Berbers conquered Ghanata in the eighth century, the ruling caste at that time, as both the _Tarik_ and also Barth’s records lead us to infer, being of Fulani blood, which in itself casts doubt upon M. Dubois’ assertion. But the more one endeavours to reconcile M. Dubois’ contention with existing records, the less sound does it appear. The Moorish power in Spain was not finally extinguished until towards the close of the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, it may be said that the Moorish cause was lost in Europe, and that their expulsion commenced with the defeat of Salado in 1340.[125] We can, therefore, for the sake of argument, take the middle of the fourteenth century as the period, approximately, when the Moors began to be “expelled from Spain.” This would be about the time when, in M. Dubois’ view, the Moors were driving the pastoral Fulani towards Aderer, “the land of sand.” Now, apart from the self-evident contradiction of a people whose wealth has ever been in their flocks and herds, originating in an arid district (sand not usually being associated with pastures), the Fulani were in point of fact already considerably farther south. Was not the market of Jenne (on which M. Dubois has himself thrown such a glamour of interest) attended as early as 1260 by Fulani?[126] Did not the King of Bornu receive a Fulani deputation from Melle between 1288 and 1306?[127] Is it conceivable that the Fulani, compelled to evacuate Aderer in the middle of the fourteenth century, would have ruled over vast tracts of territory as far south as Gurma, only one hundred years later? M. Dubois will have to bring forward a great deal of evidence—certainly something more than his own assertion, and an obscure passage in the _Tarik_—to upset the Eastern theory of Fulani origin.

Of native traditions among the Fulani attributing an Eastern origin to their race we have no end, and although too much significance need not be attached to them, they must not on that account be overlooked. There is generally a foundation of truth in native legends of this kind. Anthropometrical studies, or rather craniological studies, are, however, extremely valuable. Although carried out to a small extent so far, they appreciably strengthen the Eastern theory. Dr. Verneau, whose reputation as an anthropologist is well known, has recently published[128] the results of an examination of five skulls of Fulani chiefs from Futa-Jallon. The first three belonged to individuals known, when alive, to the French authorities of that Colony. The other two were brought home by Dr. Maclaud, who has travelled extensively among the Fulani, and to whom I am indebted for several of the photographs here reproduced. None of the originals were Fulani of the pure type. The one approaching nearest to purity was Alfa-Alliu, who was condemned to death for an unprovoked attack upon a French convoy. Of this individual’s skull, Dr. Verneau reports: “Alfa-Alliu belongs by his cranial and facial characteristics to the sur-based (vaulted) pentagonal type which enters into the composition of the present population of Erythria and the ancient population of Egypt.” Of two other skulls out of the five examined, Dr. Verneau remarks: “Their owners, no doubt, had a certain amount of negro blood in their veins, which resulted in a thickening of the osseous frame and in a notable prognathous accentuation....[129] Nevertheless, these two chiefs were not negroes; the width of the forehead, the prominence of the bones of the nose, the proportions of the nose itself, and the form of the chin, preclude any connection.” Of the two remaining skulls, Dr. Verneau concludes thus: “I will not further insist upon the cephalic character of these two deeply crossed Fulani. I would merely observe that, notwithstanding the mixed breed, they present two cranial forms which we find wherever the influence of the Ethiopians has been felt.” It is necessary to add that by “Ethiopian,” Dr. Verneau—as he is careful to explain in the opening lines of his paper—designates the Abyssinian type, holding that the synonymy given to the terms “Negro” and “Ethiopian” is a popular confusion. Élisée Reclus, in his great geographical work, also states that the formation of the Fulani cranium has affinities with the Egyptian type. To this testimony may be added, that the most recent studies in Berber anthropometry tend to divorce the Berbers from the ancient Egyptian and the Eastern stock.[130]

Dr. Blyden, who visited Timbo (the capital of Futa-Jallon, one of the most important Fulani centres in West Africa) in the seventies, and who, like Dr. Bayol and others, was immensely impressed with what he saw, remarks in a report to the Government of the time (to which I have been able, through the doctor’s kindness, to have access): “On entering a Fulah town the first thing which strikes a stranger is the Caucasian cast of features, especially among the older people; yet every now and then, in the children of parents having all the physical traits of the Semitic family, there recurs the inextinguishable Negro physiognomy.”[131] “It is evident,” the doctor goes on to say, “that while there is a large infusion of foreign blood among the people, there is still the influence of a powerful race-stock which has thoroughly assimilated the alien elements, and this may be judged from the strong pride of ancestry which they possess, their respect for the past and their care for posterity.”

D’Eichtal sought to trace in the Hovas of Madagascar a relationship with the Fulani, which would, obviously, connect them with the Malays—the object of d’Eichtal’s treatise. The sole basis of the theory was a chance similarity in certain words; but were d’Eichtal right, we should have to admit a complete reversal of the cycle of Fulani migration, which is quite impossible. Fulfulde cannot as yet be definitely classed among the languages, but, so far as our knowledge extends, it has Semitic antecedents. When we endeavour to find some other links, connecting the Fulani with the East, several circumstances arrest our attention. The first is provided in a passage of Hanno’s “Periplus”; the second, in the invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos; the third, in the Hebraic tendencies and peculiar familiarity with Hebrew legends observed among the Fulani; the fourth, in an attachment to their cattle so remarkable as to suggest a far-off bovine worship. These points may be severally examined.

[Illustration: PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON]

When, towards the close of the sixteenth century B.C., the rulers of Carthage conceived a scheme of over-sea colonisation which should redound to the glory of the Empire and free it at the same time from a portion at least of the undesirable elements of the population, they despatched an armada of sixty ships containing some thirty thousand souls, under the command of a worthy magistrate of the name of Hanno, with instructions to pass through the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) and to lay the basis of a colony somewhere beyond them. The fleet appears to have navigated the West Coast of Africa until it reached the Senegal, the Carthaginians proceeding for some little distance up that river, subsequently pushing southward to the Gambia and farther still to the “Southern Horn,” which it has been sought to identify with Sherbro Sound.[132] This meeting of Phœnician culture with aboriginal primitiveness on the West Coast was, as Sir Harry Johnston has strikingly put it, “The first sight that civilised man had of his wild brother since the two had parted company in Neolithic times.” And yet in one respect this general statement is open to doubt. It was not only Negroes with whom the Carthaginian navigator came in contact.

On his return, Hanno wrote an account of his wanderings, in the Punic tongue, termed a Periplus or circumnavigation, which he dedicated to Moloch, the deity of the Carthaginians, in the Temple of Cronos. Through the enterprise of Greek scientists, the relation of Hanno’s voyage has been preserved to us. About three centuries after its completion, Ptolemæus Claudius, a Greek geographer and historian, published eight volumes of geographical research. The portion relating to Africa was mainly founded upon Carthaginian material and included a translation of Hanno’s “Periplus.” From Ptolemy’s description, we gather that in the neighbourhood of the Gambia (Stachir) the Carthaginians came across a people of a lighter hue than the Negroes. These people the author calls “Leucæthiopes.” Pliny also speaks of the “Leucæthiopes,” placing them, however, a couple of degrees farther north. Thus five hundred years B.C., Carthaginian navigators reported in West Africa the existence of a people to whom the epithet of “black” did not apply, in the same region in which eight hundred years later—that being the first reference to West Africa which has come down to us—we hear of an Empire whose rulers were “white,” founded by a monarch with a Fulfulde affix to his name.

Who could those light-complexioned “Africans” have been? Not, assuredly, Arabs; still less Bantus. With the Berber tribes the Carthaginians were in touch everywhere, in Mauritania, Numidia, Cyrenaica. From the Berbers, Carthage drew her mercenaries, who often enough proved more dangerous than useful. The colonists would have recognised the type had they met with it in West Africa, and if the “Leucæthiopes” had been Berbers they would have been differently described in the “Periplus.” Indeed, there is some ground for believing that the colonists numbered Berbers among their ranks. Moreover, the Berber occupation could not at that time have extended as far south, by at least fifteen degrees, as the Senegal-Gambia region. There is not, so far as I am aware, any record extant suggesting the presence of the Berbers in the valley of the Senegal until the eighth century A.D. To what race, then, could the “Leucæthiopes” have belonged? To what race but the Fulani, to whom the description given by Hanno could alone—bearing in mind the period of the expedition—by any possibility apply? That is link one.[133]

[Illustration: FULANI HOUSE—FUTA-JALLON]

The invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings from the East is one of the obscurest stages of Egyptian history. Professor Lepsius believed that the invasion of the Shepherds occurred during the thirteenth dynasty (which, according to the same authority, began in 2136 B.C.), and ended about 1626 B.C. with the expulsion of the Shepherds. About 2000 B.C. then—a little earlier or a little later, according to other authorities—Egypt, being at that time under the Theban dynasty, was invaded by vast hordes of Asiatics, who brought with them enormous quantities of cattle and sheep.[134] It would seem as though some great internal convulsion, the cause of which can only be conjectured, had precipitated into the fertile valley of the Nile a number of nomadic pastoral tribes, by nature herdsmen, shepherds and agriculturists, but converted for the time being either through famine, scarcity of pastures, pressure of other tribes behind them, or spontaneous race-expansion, into a warlike and conquering people which swept onward in irresistible strength until they reached a land suitable for their herds—their only wealth. The distinctive character of their occupation is preserved in their name—Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. After a sanguinary struggle, the invaders succeeded in fairly establishing themselves in Lower Egypt, and gradually extended their influence over Upper Egypt, where, however, they were unable to gain complete mastery. Their supremacy lasted about five hundred years. They were finally overthrown and driven out of the country by the representatives of the old Theban dynasty under Misphragmuthosis and Thoutmosis, somewhere about 1636 B.C., if we adopt the estimate of the celebrated Egyptologist, Professor Lepsius. What became of them? The Egyptian scribe, Manetho, contends that they crossed back into Asia, but the statement is very doubtful, and his further assertion that they occupied Judea and founded Jerusalem is scouted by the learned.

Is it not legitimate to suppose that a portion, at any rate, of so enterprising and courageous a people, which must have been extraordinarily numerous to have held sway over Egypt for so considerable a period, should have preferred to plunge into the unknown West, in search of fresh territories where their herds might find sustenance, rather than ignominiously return in the direction from whence they came? For five hundred years Africa had been their home. Africa offered them extensive pastures for their cattle. They must have largely mingled and intermarried with the Egyptians. Family and historical ties bound them to the African soil. They had become adopted children of that Continent, which in all ages has exerted a peculiar fascination over the various immigrant peoples that have entered it. History, I believe, contains not one single instance of a people which, having once settled in Africa, has left it again. The Shepherds had risen in Africa to a position of paramountcy. Out of the undisciplined host which spread itself like a torrent over the Nile Delta, a race of statesmen had evolved capable of ruling what was perhaps the mightiest Empire of the then civilised world. It is incredible to imagine that a whole people could have been driven in a fixed direction, as Manetho would have us believe. Tens of thousands must have been employed, as their compatriots the Hebrews were employed, by the victorious Thebans, in raising those mighty monuments of stone whose ruins to-day provoke the wonder of all men. Many more must have escaped westwards, and gained with their belongings the fertile plains of inland Cyrenaica, and, through the ages, pushed on and on, ever seeking pastures new, until in the course of a thousand years the Carthaginians found their descendants in the rich valleys of the Senegal and Gambia—with their national characteristics preserved, their “powerful race stock” unimpaired, their “strong pride of ancestry” remaining, their ways adapted to their new environment.

Others again may have migrated south and have largely influenced the composite ethnic elements of Erythria, of which the nomadic cattle-rearing Wahuma of Uganda would appear to be an offshoot—the Asiatic origin of the latter being generally admitted. So much for link number two.

The advent of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt was approximately contemporaneous with Hebrew emigration from Mesopotamia to Palestine. Three hundred years later, in 1700 B.C. according to Biblical records, when a grievous famine lay upon the land, the famous Israelitish _trek_ into Africa began, upon the direct invitation of Egypt’s ruler, in whose employ Joseph had risen to a position of great influence. The new-comers established themselves in the fertile province of Goshen,[135] east of the Nile, where the river branches as the prongs of a fork. Who was the reigning Pharaoh at the time? The gap in Egyptian history unfortunately prevents an answer. But that, unless the most competent Egyptologists are hopelessly wrong, he was one of the Shepherd Kings, cannot be doubted. And, apart from the similarity of dates, there are inherent reasons which still further fortify what may almost be said to be a certainty. The Hyksos were a conglomeration of Asiatic herdsmen whom circumstances had forced into the valley of the Nile. The _rôle_ of warriors and administrators which they assumed was probably an accident, the result of finding a powerful nation in occupation of the land they coveted, and whom they had to subdue before being able to occupy. That they succeeded is proof, not only of their courage but of their political genius and power of organisation—qualities for which the Fulani are to-day conspicuous, notwithstanding the demoralising tendency of contact with intellectually inferior races. It was their political genius which led the Hyksos to invite an influx of Israelites, Asiatics like themselves, of the same Semitic origin and the same Monotheistic leaning. The wisdom of the policy is apparent. The Hyksos knew well that their rule was unpopular, that the Princes of the overthrown Theban dynasty were continually intriguing against their domination in the southern provinces, and that their hold upon the country depended upon the number of their adherents in the north. They set themselves, therefore, to encourage Asiatic immigration. Inversely, it was but natural that, when the representatives of the old Theban dynasty once more came into their own, the Israelites should have been specially marked out for resentment.

The administrative seat of the Hyksos was Memphis, the city sacred to the worship of the bull Apis. At first the Hyksos replaced the worship of Apis, incarnation of the divine Osiris, by their own divinity Set, but they were compelled by the pressure of public opinion to allow the revival of the national cult. After suffering a temporary eclipse, bull-worship continued as before. It is, indeed, open to question whether the Shepherds themselves, and their compatriots the Israelites, did not end by adopting, partially at least, the divinities of the conquered. Can we not trace, for instance, in the incident of the golden calf erected by Aaron in the wilderness, and the employment of golden calves by Jeroboam, in order to symbolise the deity, the strong hold which bull-worship had taken upon the imagination of those pastoral Semites, the Israelites, whom the Hyksos, pastoral Semites like themselves, had invited to reside with them in the land of Goshen? What more natural that, being herdsmen, and taught by long years of experience to look upon cattle-rearing as their natural avocation, the Semitic invaders of Egypt and their allies should have been predisposed, and insensibly drifted, towards the adoption of the religion which they found existing in the country they had conquered, and of which the chief symbolical deity was a bull?

[Illustration: FULANI CATTLE-PEN]

Now is it not a very singular fact that the Fulani should be the only people in Western Africa whose former religious beliefs have been associated, by those who have lived amongst them, with an ancient bull-worship, the former cult of Egypt? The unusual regard they have for their cattle, even after Islam has been established among the great bulk of them for upwards of nine centuries, is singled out for special notice on the part of numerous observers. Reclus deems the circumstance to be worthy of notice: “The scrupulous care,” he says, “which they devote to their cattle-pens has something in it of a religious nature.” Here and there, in the Western Sudan, tribes of Fulani are met with, whose members have remained pagan, and their paganism, in so far as it has been observed, consists in a superstitious reverence for their cattle, almost amounting to adoration. Among the Mohammedan Fulani the _bororo_[136] is still pre-eminently the national representative of the race, and the purest types are found among the _bororoji_, rather than amidst those of their countrymen who have become over-lords, administrators and land-owners on a large scale. “The Foola nation,” says Winterbottom, “is the only one in this part of the coast to whom the title of _armentarius afer_ can be justly applied.”[137] Many and various are the stories told by French officers serving in the Western Sudan of the curious affinity between the Fulani and their cattle, an affinity which is a perpetual subject of comment among their Negro neighbours.[138] Clapperton tells us how the cattle respond at long distances to the shrill cry of the Fulani herdsman, who, by the way, is said never to employ a dog.[139] One of the most remarkable French stories is that related by an officer operating in the Baol district of the Western Sudan. In the course of a day’s work the officer had commandeered some cattle from the natives; among the animals was a fine black bull obtained from a group of wandering Fulani herdsmen. When night fell, the cattle were duly penned and a _Spahis_[140] posted as sentry over them. Towards midnight the officer was roused from sleep by the _Spahis_ informing him with much solemnity that it would be necessary to slaughter the black bull at once. “Are you mad?” cried the astonished Frenchman. “Not at all, Lieutenant,” replied the soldier imperturbably; “it is the cattle that are mad, for the Fulani are calling the bull—listen.” Stepping out into the moonlight the officer listened. Presently from a neighbouring hill came the sound of a plaintive chant. At the same moment a violent disturbance took place among the cattle. The officer hurried towards the pen followed by the sentry, the chant meanwhile continuing in a cadence of inexpressible melancholy. The commotion in the pen increased, and before the Frenchman could reach it, one of the beasts was seen to clear the enclosure at a bound and crash through the bush, following the direction of the sound and bellowing loudly the while. It was the black bull. He had broken the halter which bound him and leapt a palisade five feet high! With the disappearance of the bull the chant abruptly ceased. Next morning the Fulani were nowhere to be found.[141]

The Hebraic flavour—if one may put it so—which seems to permeate many of the Fulani customs, especially among the less contaminated elements of the race, has been recorded by careful observers. A friend, an officer in the employ of the Northern Nigeria administration, who was intimately acquainted with the Fulani, whose language he spoke, and who possessed considerable erudition, had prepared a number of notes for me on the subject, which, unfortunately, I never received, owing to his death while serving in Africa. One custom which had specially impressed him among the pure Fulani was the habit of setting aside the firstborn. He found that the Fulani woman of unmixed blood in the Binue region never suckled her firstborn, but consigned it to the care of friends, and completely disinterested herself from its future career, while bestowing upon the second child, and subsequent children, the usual motherly solicitude. He connected this singular custom with a distorted rendering of the punishment visited upon the Egyptians in the time of the Captivity.

[Illustration: A HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL AND A SUSU]

The lecture delivered in 1886 by Captain de Guiraudon (who published a Fulfulde manual, and who resided for several years in the Fulani country in Senegambia) before the seventh Congress of Orientalists contains some interesting references to the subject under discussion. In the course of his relations with the Fulani, De Guiraudon was particularly struck with their peculiar knowledge of Jewish history. So familiarly did they speak of the chief Hebrew personalities of the Old Testament, and so well posted were they with the principal events related in it, that they could not, argued De Guiraudon, have acquired their knowledge merely through Arabic sources. They referred to those times as though dealing with their own national records. Moses and Abraham might have been individuals of the same race as themselves. “In their oral legends Moses plays a very important part, and although certain passages of the Scriptures are transformed or rather assimilated, they have so intense a Biblical and Hebraic tone as to exclude all Arabic influence.” De Guiraudon noted, however, that their Israelitish chronicles ceased after Solomon. “What they knew of the miracles of our Saviour was so distorted and erroneous as to prove that the New Testament had reached them from afar, in a vague and fragmentary condition.” De Guiraudon’s conclusions are best given in his own words. “It would seem as if the Puls (Fulani), if they themselves did not profess the Jewish faith, which I would rather be disposed to affirm than deny, were at least in permanent contact with the Jewish people in remote times, and that, influenced at one time or another by the Israelites, they received Old Testament legends directly from them.”

Dr. Blyden also testifies in an indirect way to the close acquaintance of the Fulani with the history of ancient Hebraic personalities. “They hold the language of the Koran,” he remarks, “in the greatest veneration, affirming that it is the language which was spoken by Adam, Seth, Noah, Abraham, and Ishmael. The descendants of Ishmael, they contend, have never been in bondage to any man; and that during the bondage of Isaac’s descendants in Egypt the language lost its purity and copiousness.”

It is significant that the son and successor of Othman Dan Fodio, sultan Bello of Hausa, second Fulani ruler over the Hausa States, in the history of the Sudan written in Arabic characters which he gave to Clapperton, describes the “Tow-rooths,” who may, I think, be identified with the Torodos (a sect of Fulani greatly looked up to), as “having originated from the Jews.”[142] Mungo Park, when writing of his experiences among the Mandingoes—who appear to have been converted to Islam by the Fulani, with whom they have been in close relationship, amiable and the reverse, for many centuries—observed a similar widespread knowledge of incidents in Old Testament history, such as the death of Abel, the lives of the Patriarchs, Joseph’s dream, and so on. Winterbottom is equally emphatic. “The customs of these people (the Fulani),” he says, “bear a striking resemblance to those of the Jews described in the Pentateuch, and after Mohammed, Moses is held by them in the highest estimation.” There is some uniformity, too, between the following descriptive passages. The first is from Kenrick (American edition), the second from Laing’s history of the Sulima people and their relations with the Fulani:

“The Jews were commanded, on the day of the Atonement, to provide a goat to carry the sins of the people, and the high-priest was to lay his hand on the head of the goat and confess the national sins. So among the Egyptians whenever a victim was offered, a prayer was repeated over its head, if any calamity was about to befall either the sacrifices or the land of Egypt, ‘it might be averted on this head.’”

“Musah Bah (a Fulani chief), shortly after his installation, ordered a great feast to be held, and, inviting to it all the head-men of Jallon Kadoo, explained to them the nature of the Mohammedan faith and told them that the Foulahs had come to settle in their country with a desire only to do them good and to show them the true road to happiness. He then ordered a large wafer of country bread and a bleeding sheep to be placed before him, and invited all those who wished to be instructed by the priests of Futa-Jallon to place their hands upon the bread and touch the sheep, which all the head-men did.”

The motives were different, but the Fulani ceremonial savours greatly of the Old Testament. So much for the remaining links.

Enough has been said, I think, to show that there is a vast field open to systematic inquiry and investigation, which may possibly lead to discoveries of a most interesting and important kind. Having examined the links one by one, let us see how they look when riveted together and what conclusions they suggest. The straight-nosed, straight-haired, relatively thin-lipped, wiry, copper or bronze complexioned (“pale-gold” as one writer puts it) Fulani male, with his well-developed cranium, and refined extremities; and the Fulani woman, with her clear skin, her rounded breasts,[143] large eyes,[144] antimony-dyed eyebrows, gracefulness of movement, beauty of form, coquettish ways and general attractiveness—are Asiatics. They are the lineal descendants of the Hyksos, having migrated westwards with the overthrow of the Shepherd conquerors. Their customs bear record to their progenitors having been influenced both by the cult of ancient Egypt and by the Israelites, whose presence in the Nile Delta was contemporaneous with Hyksos rule. Their presence in West Africa dates back at least 2500 years. To dogmatise on such a subject would be foolish; to claim having evolved an original theory would be impertinent. But I am not aware that the Eastern theory of Fulani origin has been hitherto worked out with any attempt at consecutiveness, or an endeavour made to amalgamate and give in connected form—however imperfectly—the chief factors for further study which may be usefully followed up by some one more competent than the author.

And what is to be the policy of Great Britain, of France and of Germany towards this wonderful race? Surely it should be dictated in the first place by a desire to preserve. With their faults—and what race is devoid of faults?—the Fulani have admirable qualities which can fit them to be worthy and reliable co-builders and assistants in the task which the Powers have undertaken in Western Africa. Their virility has hitherto been equal to all the calls upon it. They retain “the strong pride of race.” They possess in the highest degree the attributes of rulers. It would be a misfortune indeed if, with the advent of the European, possessed of those swift engines of destruction he is at times so prompt to use in the name of civilisation, the Fulani should disappear from the regions they have leavened with their intelligence.

PART III