the Nouba of Kordoftln and the Bartibra of- Nubia; which Dr.
Prichard is at a loss whether to attribute to climate or to comminglings
of races. Of the two opinions the latter is the only reasonable
one; because the Nubians or modern Bar&bra are the representatives
of an original indigenous stock; whose normal position stands northward
of pure Negro races.
The inhabitants of Dar-Four and Fezz&n exhibit some striking
peculiarities, hut we shall pass them by, as non-essential to our present
objects, with the observation, that, while the former approximate
the Nubian, the latter verge towards the Atlantic Berber type.
The Eastern Nubians, or Bisharine or Bejawy Race. — To the eastward
of Nubia, throughout the deserts and denuded hill-country east
of Egypt, we encounter different tribes and nations, all supposed to
belong to the same race, which is one of the most widely-spread in
Ethiopia, stretching from the Eastern desert at Thebes, to the So-
mauli-country below Shoa. The Bishari are the most powerful of
these clans. The Hadharebe, to the southward of the Bishari, and
the Ababdeh, to the northward, belong, it is believed, to the same
stock. Under the appellation Hadharebe are included numerous
tribes, which it would be tedious and useless to enumerate.2 8 SuUkim,
or Suakin, is their principal settlement ; and of this place and its
inhabitants Burekhardt supplies an ample account.
£< The Suakiny have, in general, handsome and expressive features, with thin and very
short beards; their color is of the darkest brown, approaching black, but they have nothing
of the Negro character of countenance.” 239
To the same excellent observer we are indebted for a fact that,
seized upon to sustain the exploded idea of physical changes through
climate, in reality affords the happiest illustration of the mode through
which types of man become naturally effaced; viz.: by foreign amalgamations.
The town of SuAkim; in Ptolemaic times Berenice; and
containing (970 b . c.) the ancestors of the same Sukkiim240 that now
reside in its neighborhood; exhibited in Burckhardt’s day a triple
population, viz.: native Hadharebe, Arabs from the opposite coast,
and the descendants of some Turkish soldiery left there by Sooltan
Seleem. “ The present race,” says Burekhardt, “ have the African
features and manners, and are in no way to be distinguished from the
Hadherebe.” 241
Turkish soldiery cohabit with the females of every land in which
they are posted; and, while they rarely carry their own women with
them, of all points of Ottoman conquests, SuUkim, on the African desert-
coast of the Red Sea, would be the least likely to have been occupied
by Turkish married couples. In consequence, Seleem’s garrison there,
after the subjugation of Egypt in a . d . 1517, adopted as wives and
concubines the females of the Hadharebe ; and in less than ten generations,
down to the period of Burckhardt’s travels, their descendants
had been already absorbed into the aboriginal masses whence the
mothers had been.drawn.242 Sustainers of “ unity,” who once
snatched franticly at Turks metamorphosed, by climate, into Africans,
are welcome henceforward to what capital they can evolve from
Burckhardt’s narrative.
The country of the Bishari reaches from the northern frontier of
Abyssinia, along the course of the river Mareb, which flows through
the northern forests of the Shangallah to the BelAd-el-Taka and At-
bara, where dwell the Hadendoa and Hammadab, said to be the
strongest tribe of the Bishari race. Tribes of the Bishari reach northward
as far as Gebel-el-Ottaby in the latitude of Derr, where the Nile,
after its great western bend, turns back towards the Red Sea; they
oceupy all the hilly country upon the Nile from Sennaar to Dar Berber
and to the Red Sea. ( P r i c h a r d . ) Travellers do not give a flattering
account of their social condition. Burekhardt states: “ The inhospitable
character of the Bisharein would alone prove them to be a
true African race, were this not put beyond all doubt by their language.”
Riippell declares that the physical character of the Bishari is
very like that of the BarAbra. Burekhardt again observes, “ The Bishari
of Atbara, like their brethren, are a handsome and bold race of
people. I thought the women remarkably handsome; they were of
a dark brown complexion, with beautiful eyes and fine teeth; their
persons slender and elegant.” Hamilton, who saw a few of them
during his short stay about Assouan and Philse, yields very much the
same account, with the commentary, that many of them are beheld
with “ a cast of the Negro, others with very fine profile.” Prichard
makes the following just and significant remark on this description:
“ This sort of variety in physiognomy is observed by almost every
traveller in the eastern parts of the continent, from NaiRrland to
Nubia and Egypt.” Now, on the west, the population has been cut
off, by deserts and other natural impediments, from all foreign admixtures,
in consequence of their isolated position; while, on the
east, they have been subjected from time immemorial to adulteration
from Semitic immigrants. Both the Bishari and Ababdeh have been
somewhat adulterated with Arab blood; and, doubtless, far more so
through Negresses, their slaves. They may, however, be considered
a tolerably pure African race, inasmuch as the marks of adulteration
are not by any means universal; at the same time they have preserved
their native tongue, while the Arabic idioms have supplanted other
languages around them.
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