PIGMY PEOPLE OF AFRICA.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 101, 26 September 1874, Page 3

PIGMY PEOPLE OF AFRICA.

The Khedive spoke of a race of pigmies which have been discovered in the very heart of Central Africa, beyond the land of Niara Niams, and advised us to look at two natives of the tribe which had recently reached Cairo. On leaving the palace of Aberdeen, therefore, we drove immediately to the palace of the Nile, near Boulak, where they are now kept. On making inquiry the soldiers in the inner court immediately pointed out two small boys (apparently), wearing the fez, and dressed in jacket and trousers of white wool. I should have taken them for children of some Ethiopian at the first glance, and was not satisfied, until after a close inspection, that one of them was a full-grown man.

The soldiers brought the pigmies forward for our inspection, They came, half-wil-

lingly, half with an air of defiance, or of protesting against the superior strength which surrounded them. A tall Diuka. from the White Nile, blacker than charcoal, who accompanied them, spoke a little Arabic, and I was thus able to get a little additional information through him. He assured me that the pigmies were called Naam ; that their country was a year and a half from Khyrtoura (probably the time occupied by trading expeditions in going thither and returning), and that the place from which they came had the name of Takkatikat. The taller of the two pigmies, Tubbul by name, was twenty years old ; the younger, Karal, only ten or twelve. The little fellows looked at me with bright, questioning, steady eyes, while I examined and measured them. Tubbul was 46in in height, the legs being 22in, and the body with the head 24in. Head and arms were quite symmetrical, but the spine curved in remarkably from the shoulders to the hip joint, throwing out the abdomen. Yet the head was erect, the shoulders on the line of gravity, and there was no stoop in the posture of the body as in the South African bushmen. Tubbul measured 26in around the breast, and 28 around the abdomen ; his hands and feet were coarsely formed, but not large, only the kneejoints being disproportionately thick and clumsy. The facial angle was fully up to the average: there was a good development of brain, fine intelligent eyes, and nose so flattened that, in looking down the forehead from above, one saw only the lips projecting beyond it. The nostrils were astonishingly wide and square ; the complexion was that of a dark mulatto.

The boy Karal was 48 inches high, with the same general proportions. Both had woolly hair, cut short in front, but covering the crown with a circular cup of crisp little rolls. Tubbul’s age showed itself on nearer examination in his hands, feet, and joints, as well as his face. He had no beard. I lifted him from the ground, and should not estimate his weight at more than sixty-five pounds. The soldiers related that neither of the two had learned more than a few words of Arabic, but that they talked a great deal to each other in their own language. At a recent meeting of the Egyptian Institute, it was stated that the language of these pigmies has no resemblance to that of any other in Central Africa. The country of Naam, or Takkatitat, or whatever may be its correct name, is reported to be an equatorial table land, covered with low, dense thickets, in which the pigmies hide. The Khedive told me that they are warlike, and by no means despicable foes to their negro neighbours, since they are active and difficult to find among their native jungles. Dr. Schweinfurth supposes them to be the pigmies mentioned by Herodotus. The Darwinians will hardly find an intermediate race between man and monkey in them. Their curious physical peculiarities, especially the curvature of the spine, the wide mouth, with flat but distinctly marked lips, and the squareness and breadth of the nostrils, are not of a simian character. In fact, they look less like the chimpanzee than several of the tall and athletic negro tribes.—Bayard Taylor.