(3) The Cattle Zone, north of the Millet, is generally an open prairie, in which trees are scarce and grass abundant. Here, cattle and horses abound, many of the former in a wild state, and sheep and goats thrive. The industries of the Zone also include, to a limited extent, agriculture and manufacturing. Cattle constitute the wealth of the country; goats furnish the milk; rice, sweet potatoes, and a variety of vegetables are the staple foods; cotton and indigo are raised both for home consumption and for trading.
The city of Timbuctoo is one of the commercial centers of this Zone. Here quantities of products are exchanged—linen and cotton cloth, shoes of an ancient pattern, and saddles; iron and copper implements, woodenware, pottery, etc., and great numbers of cattle.
Slavery furnishes the greater part of the labor in the Cattle Zone; and here as in the Millet Zone, the slaves generally occupy the position of serfs to a chief.
Family life is at a decidedly higher stage of development. While wives are bought, and at a high price, there is a notable exception in the case of one tribe, according to whose customs daughters are allowed the right to be wooed, and the privilege of accepting or rejecting the suitor. Here only, among the many tribes of Negritians, there is evidence of romantic love so inseparable from marriage in our own land. In this Zone not a few of the tribes are Mohammedans, and in these the customs of sex relations and family life are largely dominated by that religion.
Where the Fellatahs dominate, the cleavage between rich and poor is very marked, the homes of the former being sometimes almost palatial, while those of the poor are miserable hovels made of poles, often with sorghum stalks for rafters, and straw mats for covering, and side-walls. A variety of architecture and material, however, appears in the many villages and cities of the Zone, and the daily sweeping of floors shows a desire for cleanliness unknown to other zones. The men are the chief supporters of their families, and woman enjoys a liberty elsewhere universally denied her. She owns her own property ofttimes; and her own slaves, if the family be rich, to cultivate and garner her crops. The wife is treated with respect, yet is humble and submissive, kneeling in obeisance to her husband.
Politically, the governments of the Sudan present much the picture of the old feudal days of our own ancestors. The king is supreme, and in him all legislative power is vested, influenced by the local chiefs of the towns into which the inhabitants are gathered for purposes of protection. Under the king, a council and chief officers execute his commands. Each town is administered by its local chief, who is supreme in his district. All alike furnish soldiers for the king’s army, and pay tribute to the royal treasury. Below the aristocratic class are the freemen; and below them the slaves, in castes which inhibit all incentive to rise in the social scale. However crude, a system of laws is administered, and trials are conducted by the local chief or by one of the king’s officers. Appeal can be made to the king in case decisions are felt to be unjust. Penalties are irregular, but generally extreme, including beheading or burning or dismemberment in the case of murder, while severe whipping with rawhide suffices for lesser offenses.
The remaining two great Families—the Gallas and the Bantus—inhabit eastern and southeastern Africa. They are not so largely represented in America as their kinsmen already mentioned, and regretfully we must pass them by with short notice of each.
III. The Gallas inhabit the region known as Nubia, lying to the south and west of Abyssinia, and the region on the two sides of the White Nile and thence southward almost to Lake Victoria. But it must be borne in mind that these divisional names are arbitrarily bestowed upon large groups, comprising millions of people, divided into scores of tribes, each more or less distinct in size, color, and social customs. The northern group of tribes have sometimes been called Nubians. Some of these, in time, became mixed with the Hamites, and, in ancient times, were dangerous enemies of the Roman Province of Africanus, and even compelled Diocletian to withdraw his garrisons from above the cataracts of the Nile. About 550 A. D. they were converted to Christianity and welded into a great people under the leadership of Silko. With the coming of the Arabs, they were gradually subdued, partly by force, still more by amalgamation; and, by the fourteenth century, they became largely Mohammedan in religion, while remaining essentially Negro in spite of Arab and Bosnian infusions. They have oval faces, large black eyes, and prominent narrow noses; in color, they are dark mahogany or bronze. Their kinsmen to the East and South are very similar in color and feature; and both are fine, sturdy types, the women often exceedingly graceful. Their social and economic life is not unlike that of the pastoral and agricultural tribes of the Sudan.