We learn from Sir A. Harding[245] that in the British East African Protectorate there are altogether as many as twenty-five distinct tribes, generally at a low stage of culture, with a loose tribal organisation, a fully-developed totemic system, and a universal faith in magic; but there are no priests, idols or temples, or even distinctly recognised hereditary chiefs or communal councils. The Gallas, who have crossed the Tana and here encroached on Bantu territory, have reminiscences of a higher civilisation and apparently of Christian traditions and observances, derived no doubt from Abyssinia. They tell you that they had once a sacred book, the observance of whose precepts made them the first of nations. But it was left lying about, and so got eaten by a cow, and since then when cows are killed their entrails are carefully searched for the lost volume. Exceptional interest attaches to the Wa-Giryama, who are the chief people between Mombasa and Melindi, the first trustworthy accounts of whom were contributed by W. E. Taylor[246], and W. W. A. Fitzgerald[247]. Here again Bantus and Gallas are found in close contact, and we learn that the Wa-Giryama, who came originally from the Mount Mangea district in the north-east, occupied their present homes only about a century ago "upon the withdrawal of the Gallas." The language, which is of a somewhat archaic type, appears to be the chief member of a widespread Bantu group, embracing the Ki-nyika, and Ki-pokomo in the extreme north, the Ki-swahili of the Zanzibar coast, and perhaps the Ki-kamba, the Ki-teita, and others of the interior between the coastlands and Victoria Nyanza. These inland tongues, however, have greatly diverged from the primitive Ki-giryama[248], which stands in somewhat the same relation to them and to the still more degraded and Arabised Ki-swahili[249] that Latin stands to the Romance languages.