THE DARK-SKINNED PEOPLE TERMED BY EUROPEANS BANTU.

At a period that may or may not be later than the advent of the Hottentots, offshoots of the dark-skinned race now known to Europeans as the Bantu began to make their way into Africa south of the Zambesi. It is quite impossible to affix a date to any of the early migrations, and it is by no means certain that the most degraded of the dark-skinned people now occupying the Kalahari desert and parts of the territory some distance to the eastward did not come down from the north before the Hottentots reached Table Bay. The large tribes of our time, however, to a certainty migrated to South Africa at a more recent date, when the Hottentots were in possession of at least the south-western and the greater part of the southern coast.

After the first pioneers found their way across the Zambesi and Kunene rivers, bands were constantly coming down until the middle of the eighteenth century of our era, but even now, though they have multiplied at an amazing rate since they have been under the protection of Europeans, the whole number in Africa south of those rivers does not exceed six or seven millions, who represent all the offshoots from the great mass of the race in the central zone of the continent.

The original home or birthplace of this section of the human family is unknown: some inquirers believe it to have been in the continent which its widespread branches now so largely occupy, others that it was in some distant eastern land.