6 7 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



sent quite sufficient food for thought to a more rational frame 

 of mind. 



I can not attempt to deal with the origin of the Pygmy race, 

 or its relationship to the Andamanese and the Veddahs of Ceylon, 

 who are said to have some characteristics in common with them. 

 But it seems clear that they were once spread over a great part 

 if not the whole of the continent ; that they were broken up and 

 partially exterminated by the advent of the stronger dark races ; 

 and that, as a race, they are passing away. It is interesting to 

 look at an analogous case in Europe. A race of small stature, 

 slight frame, and comparatively low type, scarcely, if at all, ad- 

 vanced beyond the hunter stage, occupied the British Islands and 

 the northwestern part of the continent. They were partly mas- 

 sacred or enslaved, partly driven into the mountains by their 

 Celtic conquerors; and in the lonely recesses of the hills and 

 woods — what with their weakness and their strength, their cun- 

 ning and their skill in metals, their music and their underground 

 dwellings, and their strange, uncanny wisdom — a growth of legend 

 and poetry sprang up about them, till they were no longer known 

 save as elves, gnomes, trolls, or " Good People," whom one dared 

 not name. 



It is somewhat suggestive, as bearing on the question of the 

 original immigration into Africa, to note that there was, as late 

 as the sixteenth century, a Pygmy tribe living in Arabia, who 

 may well have been a detachment left behind when the main body 

 crossed the Isthmus of Suez. So far as I am aware, the only au- 

 thority for this fact is Lodovico di Bartema, otherwise known as 

 Ludovicus Wertomannus, whose narrative of a visit to Mecca 

 (about 1500) is contained in vol. iv of Hakluyt's Voyages. This 

 account runs thus : 



In the space of eyght dayes we came to a monntayne which conteyneth in 

 circuit ten or twelve myles. This is inhabited with Jewes to the number of fyve 

 thousand or thereabout. They are very little of stature, as of the hyght of five 

 or sixe spannes, and some muche lesse. They have small voyces like women, 

 and of blacke colour, yet some blacker than other. They feede of none other 

 raeate than goates' fleshe. They are circumcised, and deny not themselves to be 

 Jewes. 



This last sentence, apparently, contains the evidence for their 

 Judaism. It is now well known that the rite in question is com- 

 monly practiced in Africa, and by the Hottentots, among others. 

 What has become of these " Jewes " does not appear. Probably 

 they have gone the way of nearly all the Bushmen. Will the 

 Akkas and the rest follow them ? As a race they are doomed to 

 pass away ; yet this need not imply — we hope it does not — that 

 they are to be massacred, or starved out of existence. It was long 

 believed that the Celtic Britons had been utterly exterminated 



