the missionary outposts of Islam, and entering the Central Sudan, I found myself in a comparatively well-governed empire, teeming with a busy populace of keen traders, expert manufacturers of cloth, brass work and leather; a people, in fact, who have made enormous advances towards civilisation.” In order to form a just estimate of the missionary activity of Islam in Nigritia, it must be borne in mind that, while on the coast and along the southern boundary of the sphere of Islamic influence, the Muhammadan missionary is the pioneer of his religion, there is still left behind him a vast field for Muslim propaganda in the inland countries that stretch away to the north and the east, though it is long since Islam took firm root in this soil. Some sections of the Fūnj, the predominant Negro race of Sennaar, are partly Muhammadan and partly heathen, and Muhammadan merchants from Nubia are attempting the conversion of the latter. [1096] The pagan tribe of the Jukun, [1097] whose once powerful kingdom disappeared before the victorious development of the Fulbe, has withstood the advancing influence of Muhammadanism, though the foreign minister of their king has always been a Muslim and colonies of Hausas and other Muhammadans have settled among them; but these Muslim settlers do not succeed in making any converts from among the Jukun, whose traditions of their past greatness make them cling to the national faith whose spiritual headship is vested in their king. [1098] It would be easy also to enumerate many sections of the population of the Sudan and Senegambia, that still retain their heathen habits and beliefs, or cover these only with a slight veneer of Muhammadan observance even though they have been (in most cases) surrounded for centuries by the followers of the Prophet. The Konnohs, an offshoot of the great tribe of the Mandingos, are still largely pagan, and it is only in recent years that Islam has been making progress among them. [1099] Consequently, the remarkable zeal for missionary work that has displayed itself among the Muhammadans of these parts during the present century, has not far to go in order to find abundant scope for its activity. Hence the importance, in the missionary history of Islam in this continent, of the movements of reform in the Muslim religion itself and the revivals of religious life, to which attention has been drawn above.