The history or these invasions we must to-day largely imagine. Between two
and three thousand years ago the wilder tribes of Negroes began to move
out of the region south or southeast of Lake Chad. This was always a land
of shadows and legends, where fearful cannibals dwelt and where no
Egyptian or Ethiopian or Sudanese armies dared to go. It is possible,
however, that pressure from civilization in the Nile valley and rising
culture around Lake Chad was at this time reënforced by expansion of the
Yoruba-Benin culture on the west coast. Perhaps, too, developing culture
around the Great Lakes in the east beckoned or the riotous fertility of
the Congo valleys became known. At any rate the movement commenced, now by
slow stages, now in wild forays. There may have been a preliminary
movement from east to west to the Gulf of Guinea. The main movement,
however, was eastward, skirting the Congo forests and passing down by the
Victoria Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Here two paths beckoned: the lakes
and the sea to the east, the Congo to the west. A great stream of men
swept toward the ocean and, dividing, turned northward and fought its way
down the Nile valley and into the Abyssinian highlands; another branch
turned south and approached the Zambesi, where we shall meet it again.

Another horde of invaders turned westward and entered the valley of the
Congo in three columns. The northern column moved along the Lualaba and
Congo rivers to the Cameroons; the second column became the industrial and
state-building Luba and Lunda peoples in the southern Congo valley and
Angola; while the third column moved into Damaraland and mingled with
Bushman and Hottentot.

In the Congo valley the invaders settled in village and plain, absorbed
such indigenous inhabitants as they found or drove them deeper into the
forest, and immediately began to develop industry and political