DOOMED RACE OF DWARFS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3035, 13 May 1926, Page 4

DOOMED RACE OF DWARFS.

Representative of a doomed race no member of which has ever been seen in England, an Indian girl appeared before a gathering of scientists at the British Museum last month. The girl is one of the once mighty Maya Kekchis race, of which scarcely 250 remain. Degenerates, both physically and mentally, the Mayas of to-day lack all will power, and when they sicken from fever they merely lie down and die because they know instinctively that they are the last survivors of a nation whose history is over. Wfliile Mr. Hedges, the famous explorer, was on an expedition to Panama, a chief of the San Bias Indians told him of a people living further inland who were dying off in vast numbers. With a party of guides the explorer penetrated to the heart of this region. They had never seen white people before and looked upon Mr. Hedges and his party as gods. Not one of them is more than four and a half feet in height.

The women wear round their bodies wonderfully decorated cloths without lying or fastening of any kind, and they refuse to disclose the secret by which the ap-

pared is kept in position. They are the dominant sex, and direct the labour of the men. Life among these Indians is entirely primitive, but they are rigidly moral. This land of mystery is the most terrible and ghastly jungle in the world, both from living horrors it contains.

The removal of the dense bush has revealed the foundation of white-stoned pyramids and other evidences of a : devil civilisation. One stone building covers eight acres, built of millions of blocks of cut stones. It is the only ampitheatre that has ever been found on the American Continent.

There was seating accommodation in this great ampitheatre for 10,000 people.