Note 10 — Chapter I · PREHISTORIC RACE MOVEMENTS IN AFRICA

Some writers reserve “Hamite” and “Hamitic” for the general name of the language family which includes the Libyan and the eastern Hamitic tongues, and employ Kushite as a special designation for the great eastern branch of Hamitic speech-forms which extends its range through North-east Africa from Egypt to the Equator. The main groups of these eastern Hamitic or Kushite languages are the Beja or Bisharin of the Red Sea north-west coast and the country between the Nile and Suakin; the Saho of the Abyssinian coast-lands; the Afar-Danakil-Somali group; the Agau-Bilin of the Abyssinian highlands; the Gala, stretching from central Abyssinia to the Juba and Tana rivers; and the Kafa of south-west Galaland, reaching southward to near Lake Rudolf. In the south-west of the Ethiopian Empire there are many unclassified Hamitic dialects (as there are in northern German East Africa) which are much mixed with negro word-roots and syntax. These almost merge into the Masai and Nilotic.