But in all the mass of idolatry was a leaven of quickening influence, which prevented it from becoming altogether dead and sodden. From Lake Chad to the Atlantic there was scattered one remarkable race who forgot not God, neither lapsed into the abominations of the infidel. Though without political status, and holding no better position than that of semi-serfs--being, moreover, spread broadcast in small groups as shepherds--they yet had in them a bond of union and an inspiring force which supported them in all their trials, and kept them from racial annihilation. [Illustration: GROUP OF FULAHS.] That race was the Fulah, and their bond of union was the religion of Islam. Where they came from is unknown. Everything relating to them is a matter of conjecture, though in the Sudanese chronicles we find various allusions to them extending back several centuries. Their well-chiselled features, straight wiry hair, and copper-coloured skin, all distinctly mark them off as not African, and point towards the East as the cradle of their race. Still more, their well-developed skulls and high intellectual average place them on an altogether higher level in the scale of humanity than any of the negro or Bantu races among whom they settled. At some remote period, we may safely conjecture, they immigrated from the East, and gradually moved westward--not as warrior-conquerors, but as peace-loving shepherds, whose knowledge of cattle, &c., made them welcome additions to every country they reached. Nomadic in habit, and depending for subsistence on their flocks and herds, it was impossible for them to settle in large numbers in any one place--the country being already occupied by the negro inhabitants. Accordingly it was ever necessary for them to move westward, leaving behind them only such numbers as could conveniently get a living. By the fourteenth or fifteenth century the Fulahs had reached the watersheds of the Niger and the Gambia. Here the migratory tide was stopped by physical and other causes. The country beyond proved to be less adapted for pastoral pursuits, and possibly was already thickly populated. There being no further outlet westward, the newcomers naturally accumulated as does the dammed back stream. They increased in numbers, and correspondingly in power, till they became of no small importance, and founded for themselves a kingdom which has been already mentioned under the name of Fulahdu.