THE SHABÚN.[173]
Locality.—South, or south-west, of the Koldagi.
THE FERTIT.[173]
Locality.—South of the Shabún.
All these agree in being Pagan Negroes, south and south-west of Obeyd, the capital of Kordofan.
They also agree in being slave countries, the markets they supply being those of Ægypt.
Lastly, their languages have undoubted affinities with those of the Nubian class, a fact which verifies the statement at the beginning of the present section, viz. that the group of African Negroes was artificial rather than natural, since tested by physical form, the Denkas, &c., fall in the same class with the Ibos, &c., whereas their real affiliation is with the Nubians.
Through the researches of Dr. L. Tutshek, one of these languages is known grammatically, i. e. the Tumali; and it may be as well to remark that it has (amongst others) as a Semitic character, the method of expressing grammatical relations by means of internal change rather than by the addition of prefixes, postfixes, or inter-fixes, and also that such changes (as in the Semitic tongues) fall upon the vowel rather than the consonantal elements of the word.
More undoubted Negroes of the Nile are—