Pigmies.

Manawatu Herald, 5 December 1895, Page 3

Pigmies.

A story is going the rounds of the papers about an inter* view between Mr Gladstone and Mr Stanley, in which Mr Gladstone pooh-poohed Stanley's discoveries in Africa, and credited those of Herodotus. Stanley being asked what certain mountains on the map were, gave the names, and being again asked who had given them such ridiculous names, Stanley said he had as be had discovered them. " No, no," was Mr Gladstone's reply. " those mountains were discovered twenty - six centuries ago by Herodotus." Now again we have our old chronicler Herodotus confirmed. The pygmies of Gresk fable were represented by Homer as dwelling on the south em snores of Ocean, and as being warred on by the cranes in their annual migrations. Later writers plaoed them in India and elsewhere. The African pygmies described by Herodotus, and hitherto supposed to be equally fabulous were apparently the same as the remarkably race or races of dwarfs found by recent explorers in various parts of equatorial Africa, especially those discovered by Stanley (1888) in the forests of the Upper Congo region. The cablegrams now inform us that Dr Smith, the African explorer, has discovered 15 tribes of pygmies north of Lakes Rudolph and Stephanie, in the country between Abyssinia and British East Africa. Herodotus right once more.