Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1497 and went north on the
east coast as far as India. In the next ten years the Portuguese had
occupied more than six different points on that coast, including
Sofala.[33]

Thus civilization waxed and waned in East Africa among prehistoric
Negroes, Arab and Persian mulattoes on the coast, in the Zend or Zeng
empire of Bantu Negroes, and later in the Bantu rule of the Monomotapa.
And thus, too, among later throngs of the fiercer, warlike Bantu, the
ancient culture of the land largely died. Yet something survived, and in
the modern Bantu state, language, and industry can be found clear links
that establish the essential identity of the absorbed peoples with the
builders of Zymbabwe.

So far we have traced the history of the lands into which the southward
stream of invading Bantus turned, and have followed them to the Limpopo
River. We turn now to the lands north from Lake Nyassa.

The aboriginal Negroes sustained in prehistoric time invasions from the
northeast by Negroids of a type like the ancient Egyptians and like the
modern Gallas, Masai, and Somalis. To these migrations were added attacks
from the Nile Negroes to the north and the Bantu invaders from the south.
This has led to great differences among the groups of the population and
in their customs. Some are fierce mountaineers, occupying hilly plateaus
six thousand feet above the sea level; others, like the Wa Swahili, are
traders on the coast. There are the Masai, chocolate-colored and
frizzly-haired, organized for war and cattle lifting; and Negroids like
the Gallas, who, blending with the Bantus, have produced the race of
modern Uganda.