Note 47 — Chapter IX · VISIT TO SA’ADANI, THE COPAL FIELD.

It has been remarked by Dr Beke (Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society, vol. xvii. p. 74), that hereabouts is the position assigned by Ptolemy to his Anthropophagi, living around the Barbaric Gulf, and by El Mas’udi to the men-eating Zenj—a curious coincidence. I am convinced that all the negro tribes now settled upon the East and West coasts of Intertropical Africa have migrated, or rather have gravitated, from the interior within a few centuries, and that the process is still in active operation. Whatever the Wamakua Menschen-fresser may have been, the Wadoe seem to have adopted cannibalism of late years, in terrorem. So Tarik, the Arab invader of Spain, when fighting his way between Bœtis and the Tagus, ordered his men to cook (but not to eat) the flesh of slain Christians.