Extract from Denham and Clapperton.—"On penetrating a short distance in this direction, with some people from Mandara, we saw the inhabitants run up the mountains quite naked, with ape-like agility. On another occasion, a company of savages were sent from a Kerdy, or Pagan village, termed Musgow, as a peace-offering, to deprecate the Sultan, who was on the eve of making a kidnapping expedition into their country. On entering his palace they threw themselves upon the ground, pouring sand upon their heads, and uttering the most piteous cries. On their heads, which were covered with long, woolly, or rather bristly hair, coming quite over their eyes, they wore a cap of the skin of a goat or some animal like a fox; round their arms and in their ears were rings of what appeared to be bone, and around the necks of each were from one to six strings of the teeth of the enemies they had slain in battle; teeth and pieces of bone were also pendent from the clotted locks of their hair; their bodies were marked in different places with red patches, and their teeth were stained of the same colour. Their whole appearance is said to have been strikingly wild and truly savage. Endeavours to set on foot intercourse with them were in vain; they would hold no communication, but having obtained leave, carried off the carcase of a horse to the mountains, where the fires that blazed during the night, and the savage yells which reached the valley, proved that they were celebrating their brutal feast."
This, short as it is, is a notice which would apply to no Negro tribe yet mentioned; indeed, there are many reasons for believing that south of the Mandaras the type changes, and that the populations represented by them are the almost unknown tribes of Central and Equatorial Africa. At any rate, the Mandaras are the most southern tribes hitherto known of the longitude of Bornú.
And now the comment upon the words typical, and sub-typical Negroes finds place. The two divisions coincide closely with the physical character of the area to which each applies; the departure from the true Negro features being greatest where the approach to a high-land or a table-land is the closest; the Bornúi being, at one and the same time, the most like the Negroes of the Coast, and the occupants of the most notable basin of Central Africa, i. e. the basin of Lake Tshad.
Due east of Lake Tshad we have, according to a variety of imperfect descriptions, a series of Negro districts; and here it must be admitted that the coincidence between the Negro conformation and the existence of fluviatile, lacustrine, or oceanic low-lands is not found to occur; the greater part of the tract being, according to all accounts, a table-land.
MOBBA.
Locality.—East of Lake Tshad.
Synonyms.—Called by the Arabs Dar-Saleh and Waday; Darfurians, Bergú.
Religion.—Chiefly Mahometanism.
Intermixture.—Arab.