326 NATIVES OF EASTERN BRITISH EAST AFRICA part iii 



Regions, neere eighteene yeeres," has so clearly described the pygmies 

 that his account is worth quoting. "To the north-east of Mani Kesock 

 are a kind of little people called Matimbas ; which are no bigger than 

 Boyes of twelve yeares old, but are very thicke, and live onely vpon 

 flesh, which they kill in the Woods with their Bowes and Darts. They 

 pay tribute to Mani Kesock, and bring all the Elephants' teeth and 

 tayles to him. . . . And of these [the women] will walke in the Woods 

 alone and kill the Pongos [gorillas] with their poysoned Arrowes." ^ 



The records of these dwarf races are now very numerous, and relate 

 to all parts of Africa south of the Sahara. The works of Paul du 

 Chaillu, Oscar Lenz, and Marche demonstrate the occurrence of 

 numerous settlements of these people in the region of the French 

 Congo ; there they are scattered from the south of the Cameroons, 

 through the Gabun and across the basin of the Ogowe, to the Congo 

 near Stanley Pool. In the highlands to the west of Mwutan Nzige (the 

 Albert Nyanza), which form the watershed between the Congo and the 

 Nile, live other representatives of the Negrillo race, who have been 

 carefully studied by many travellers.^ 



In the upper basin of the Congo and on the banks of its tributary, 

 the Kasai, another group of tribes of dwarfs has been described,^ which 

 has received the name of Watwa, Batwa, or Batua. Still farther to the 

 south are a few settlements of similar people, such as the Mossaro, in 

 the upper basin of the Zambesi. These are of much interest, because 

 they link the dwarfs of the Congo with the Bushmen of Bechuanaland 

 and the Cape.* 



Although the first reports of the existence of these dwarfs made 

 during the present century came from British East Africa,^ no positive 

 proof of their occurrence there had been published when I landed on 

 the coast in 1892. Dwarfs had been found in the Ruwenzori district 

 by Stuhlmann, and a portrait of a boy published by Borelli^ might 

 have been regarded as proof of their existence to the south of 

 Abyssinia ; but Cecchi '^ described the Doko, the tribe to which the 

 boy belonged, as " negroes of tall stature," and Leo Reinish,^ the great 

 authority on Hamitic languages, included the Doko in the Sidama, one 



1 Purchas, His Pilgrimes in Five Books, pt. 2 (vol. ii. ), lib. vii. ch. iii. (1625), p. 

 983; 



- Schweinfurth, Junker, Casati, Emin, and Stanley. They have also been recorded 

 by several others. 



3 By Stanley, Wissmann, Grenfell, Bateman, and Wolf. 



■* A useful bibliography of the pygmy races is given by Stuhlmann, Mit Emin 

 Pasha, 1893 (1894), pp. 473-475. Also in appendix to English translation of De 

 Quatrefages' The Pygmies (1895), '^PP- A and B, pp. 239-248. Schlichter's masterly 

 summary of the literature is referred to on p. 332. 



^ T. Boteler, Narrative of a Voyage of Discovery to Africa and Arabia, etc., 1821 to 

 1826 (1835), vol. ii. p. 212. 



^ Jules Borelli, lithiopie mdridionale (1890), p. 313. 



'' Ant. Cecchi, Da Zeila alle frontiere del Caffa (1885), vol. ii. p. 463. 



® L. Reinish, " Das Zalvvort vier and neun in dem chamitisch-semitischen Sprachen," 

 Sitz. Phil. Hist. CI. K. Akad., Wiss. Wien. Bd. cxxi. Abh. xii. (1890), p. 4. 



