PIGMIES.

Opunake Times, Volume III, Issue 150, 10 December 1895, Page 2

PIGMIES.

(to the editor.) Sir, —In connection with the following, which appeared iu your issue of 6th instant—"Dr Smith, the African explorer, has discovered 15 tribes of pigmies north of Lakes Rudolph and Stephanie, in the country between Abyssinia and British East Africa " Herodotus writes, Enterpe 11., 32 : While discoursing on the River Nile and its sources, five daring youths " set out, well furnished with water and provisions. They passed first through uninhabited country. . . . They at length saw some trees growing in a plain ; and that they approached and began to gather the fruit that grew on the trees; and while they were gathering, some diminutive men, less than men of middle stature, came up, and having seized them, carried them away ; and that the Nasamonians did not at all understand their language, nor those who carried them off the language of the Na'samonians. However, they conducted them through vast morasses, and when they had passed these they came to a city, in which all the inhabitants were of the same size as their conductors, and black in color, and by the city flowed a great river, running from the west to the east, and that crocodiles were seen in it." It was considered that these people were necromancers, and had deceived those young men. A few years ago another great traveller was called a "romancer" when he informed the world of his discovery of pigmies. But now the discovery is new in spite of the five young men quoted.—l am, &c, Explorer.