Note 79 — Chapter XX · THE LANGUAGES OF THE KILIMA-NJARO DISTRICT.

I fancy some may be inclined to suggest that the fowl may have been introduced at an earlier date into Africa by way of Madagascar, and that the Malay invaders of that island might well have brought it with them from the Indian Archipelago. Apart from the fact that we can discover no introduction of any animal or plant in a domesticated condition from Madagascar into Africa, but rather that most domesticated animals in that island bear Bantu names, and in all likelihood owe their origin to importation from the Mosambique coast, we may further consider, for weighty linguistic reasons, that the region of South-east Africa opposite Madagascar was a very unlikely site for the original home and starting-point of the Bantu people. Again, it might be argued that the fowl may have been introduced from Madagascar to the opposite coast, and that it was thence passed on into all parts of Bantu Africa—the Lake district, Natal, the Cameroons, the Congo—carrying with it everywhere its original name. But in this case how is it, while all the Bantu languages know it by kindred (practically identical) terms, that in neighbouring or intervening forms of speech of alien families it is designated by entirely dissimilar words? Also it must be noted that all foreign products introduced into Africa, and acclimatized there since the discovery of America, do not carry their original names with them from tribe to tribe as they pass across the dark continent. Things like Indian corn, sweet potatoes, manioc, the Muscovy duck, the pineapple, bear a different designation in almost every separate dialect, and though sometimes their original foreign name may turn up in the centre of Africa, in the intervening lands nearer the coast it has been long since changed and distorted beyond recognition. Lastly, the introduction into Madagascar of the domestic fowl is usually ascribed to the Arabs, about eight or nine hundred years ago. Few writers on Madagascar mention its presence in the island, and it is probably not widely kept even at the present time.