ferocious, and intolerant of all the nations of the south."[22] They lived
a nomadic life, plundering the Negroes. To such depths did the mighty
Songhay fall.

As the Songhay declined a new power arose in the nineteenth century, the
Fula. The Fula, who vary in race from Berber mulattoes to full-blooded
Negroes, may be the result of a westward migration of some people like the
"Leukoæthiopi" of Pliny, or they may have arisen from the migration of
Berber mulattoes in the western oases, driven south by Romans and Arabs.

These wandering herdsmen lived on the Senegal River and the ocean in very
early times and were not heard of until the nineteenth century. By this
time they had changed to a Negro or dark mulatto people and lived
scattered in small communities between the Atlantic and Darfur. They were
without political union or national sentiment, but were all Mohammedans.
Then came a sudden change, and led by a religious fanatic, these despised
and persecuted people became masters of the central Sudan. They were the
ones who at last broke down that great wedge of resisting Atlantic
culture, after it had been undermined and disintegrated by the American
slave trade.

Thus Islam finally triumphed in the Sudan and the ancient culture combined
with the new. In the Sudan to-day one may find evidences of the union of
two classes of people. The representatives of the older civilization dwell
as peasants in small communities, carrying on industries and speaking a
large number of different languages. With them or above them is the ruling
Mohammedan caste, speaking four main languages: Mandingo, Hausa, Fula, and
Arabic. These latter form the state builders. Negro blood predominates
among both classes, but naturally there is more Berber blood among the
Mohammedan invaders.