The name ‘Wanyika’ means People of the Nyika,[18] or wild land: it is useless, with M. G. de Bunsen, to identify their land with the Νίχωνος ὅρμος of the Periplus, as every wilderness is here called Nyika. Moreover, the name is not anciently known upon the coast: we read of the Wakilindi-ni and of the ‘Muzungulos,’ the plundering tribe which occupied the terra firma of Mombasah, and thus we may suspect the Wanyika to be a race which has emigrated from the interior since the middle of the 17th century. Their own tradition is that they were expelled by the Gallas from the lands lying N.N. West of Melinde. They occupy the highlands between S. lat. 3° and 5°, and they are bounded north by the Wataita, and south by the Wasumbara. Dr Krapf proposes for them a census of 50,000 to 60,000 souls, which appears greatly exaggerated. They are, as usual, divided into a multitude of clans, concerning which we know little but the names. Mulattoes of an early date, negroes mixed with Semitic blood and with a score of tribes, these East African families appear to have cast off in the course of ages the variety and irregularity of hybridism; moreover, if it be true that ‘the Semite is the flower of the negro race,’ the produce would hardly be properly called half-caste. Receiving for ages distinct impressions of the physical media around them, they have settled down into several and uniform national types: these, however, will not be detected by the unpractised eye. Many considerations argue them to be a degeneracy from civilized man rather than a people advancing towards cultivation. Their language attaches them to the great South African race, and some have believed in their ancient subjection to the Ethiopian or Kushite Empire. The historian of these lands, however, has to grope through the glooms of the past, guided only by the power to avail himself of the dimmest present lights. I vehemently doubt, moreover, the antiquity of maritime races in Tropical Africa—a subject which has been discussed in my sundry studies of the Western Coast. A case in point is the latest move of the pastoral Wamasai.