At the beginning of 1900 Mr. Oscar Neumann, a German, already noted for his explorations of the eastern part of the Uganda Protectorate, reached Abyssinia by the now well-trodden route from Zeila to Harar, and after visiting the Blue Nile in Gojam, explored the northern part of the Rudolf basin, and then reached the Galo, which is one of the rivers that might claim to be the head-waters of the Sobat, a river rising in those lofty, snow-patched highlands to the southwest of Enarea. From the Galo, Neumann crossed to the Akobo, and followed this stream down to its confluence with the Pibor. At this confluence he makes the Pibor such an important stream that it may well be Captain Wellby’s Ruzi. In the country immediately to the south of Kaffa and on the water-parting between the systems of the Nile and Lake Rudolf Mr. Neumann claims to have discovered Negro races of the Bantu stock. Apparently he means merely in physical type,--in other words, Negroes of more or less West African affinities; but if he or any other traveller should be able to support this statement by specimens of the language of these Sheko and Binesho peoples which actually showed affinities with the Bantu family, he would have thrown a remarkable new light on the unsolved problem concerning the source of this interesting family of African languages. The present writer has been able to show that Bantu languages of the most archaic type exist at the present day on the northwest slopes of Mount Elgon. This is the furthest point to the northeast to which the Bantu family has been traced. Thence southwards and westwards it spreads as the dominating family of languages as far as Cape Colony and Fernando Po. [Illustration: A BERTA VILLAGE IN THE MATONGWE MOUNTAINS.]