This western shore being altogether too poor a country for the evolution of real sea-going vessels, and the Arabs of the eastern side being one of the first of the sailor and exploring nations of the world, it is no wonder that all the traffic of the Red Sea is carried out by Arabs, and that Arabs are to be found in every village of the coast. Besides the sailors they supply the shop-keepers, merchants and skilled artisans, and nowadays many come over to work as labourers in Port Sudan. The two types, Hamitic natives and Semitic Arabs, can therefore be seen together and contrasted very easily. (Compare Figs. 11, 12 and 13 on [Plate VII] and [Fig. 10.]) Apart from dress the following important physical differences are obvious at first sight. The West Coast man is generally the taller, much darker in colour, and with smaller features, especially a smaller and straighter nose. He is as often “good looking” as is the Arab, and that perhaps, is the most generally appreciable difference between him and the negro. In contrast with the Arab his hair is a “fuzzy” mop not jet black[10] nor merely curly. His beard[11] is scantier, though to both it is the most precious of personal beauties. Mentally, though many are very intelligent, he is the inferior of the Arab who has occupied all the skilled trades in the country, but he is the superior again of the negro. It is however debateable whether this effect may not be partly due to the civilisation of a more populous and richer country having brought out the capabilities of those Arabs who possess any.
Plate VII
Fig. 11. An Arabian Sea captain
Fig. 12. An old man of the Bisharin
Fig. 13. A negro ex-slave
I have had closer personal acquaintance, than is generally possible to an Englishman, with more than fifty natives, and know the character and capabilities of each individual among them. Some are intelligent, some stupid, varying extremely, just as much as a corresponding number of English labourers. On the whole I should think too that they vary between much the same limits. Our chief sailor, an Arab, is not far ahead of the best of the natives, and Arabs I have met are often as stupid as the less intelligent of the latter.
The negroes are quite distinct. To begin with they are black, not merely chocolate brown, with a blackness that hardly admits of shades, and differ from the other races in all the well-known negro characteristics, such as shape of nose and lips, poor development of calf, and the curious way the hair grows in little patches.