270 



NA TURE 



[January 21, 1892 



tradict him. But all that Mr. Hunot says, in the long para- 

 graph quoted from his letter, is that he recollects an adult dwarf 

 of about the height of a boy of ten or eleven years of age who 

 lived and died in Mogador. All that Captain Rolleston says is 

 that he saw in Tangiers a dwarf of about thirty- five or forty 

 years of age 3 to 4 feet in height, and of an unusually 

 light complexion. All that Mr. Carleton says is that he has 

 seen a dwarf at Alcazar. All that Sir John Druminond Hay 

 says is that he hunted up at Tangiers some Sus and Dra people 

 who had seen dwarfs. All that Miss Day says is that she had 

 done the same at Telcmen. All that Mr. Harris says, of his 

 own knowledge, is that he has seen two dwarfs — one at Fez, 

 about 4 feet 2 inches in height, and of a light brown colour ; and 

 the other, about whom no particulars are given, somewhere in 

 the country. All that Miss Herdman, whom I had the pleasure 

 of meeting at Fez, says is that she has never seen a dwarf in 

 Morocco, but that she has heard of one, and has drawn out 

 tales about a tribe of dwarfs from her native servants. All that 

 Mr. Halliburton himself says to the point is that he has seen 

 and measured a very timid and obliging dwarf of about thirty 

 years of age, 4 feet 6 inches in height, and of a peculiar reddish 

 complexion, in Tangiers. 



Let me add to Mr. Halliburton's list of European witnesses. 

 I have myself seen two dwarfs in Morocco — one in Fez, and the 

 other in some northern town (I cannot for the moment recollect 

 which, and have of course no papers to refer to). The first of 

 these might perhaps have passed as a true dwarf — a man of small 

 size, but well proportioned, like Tom Thumb ; but the other 

 was certainly a disease-dwarf, with a large unshapely head and 

 trunk, and little bowed legs, like Canny Elshie, or the Wise 

 Wight o' Mucklestane Moor. Rickets are not unknown in 

 Morocco. I have no doubt that that malady is common in 

 certain districts periodically visited by famine or devastated by 

 war, and in which infant feeding is not conducted on scientific 

 principles ; and the probability is that men and women of 

 stunted and distorted growth are more numerous in proportion 

 to population in Morocco than they are in England. The 

 wonder is to me that the number of instances of the occurrence 

 of dwarfs in Morocco, which Mr. Halliburton in his long- 

 continued researches has been able to establish, is so exceedingly 

 small ; and that one dwarf, for example he of Fez, has, like a 

 stage army, to do duty several times over. But had he suc- 

 ceeded in identifying ten times the number of dwarfs that he 

 has actually traced out, he would only have proved that dwarfs 

 exist in Morocco as in all other countries, and would not have 

 advanced a step towards proving his proposition that there is a 

 tribe of dwarfs in the Atlas. I know a little Scotch town in 

 which there are three dwarfs ; but it would be scarcely legiti- 

 mate to infer from that fact that there is a concealed clan of 

 MacManikins in the Grampians. That the dwarfish condi- 

 tion in the dwarfs described by Mr. Halliburton was an acci- 

 dental variation, and not a racial characteristic, is rendered more 

 than probable by the fact that two of them — the only two who are 

 reported to have had families — had offspring of normal stature. 



The native reports about dwarfs and dwarf tribes, which Mr. 

 Halliburton sets forth in much detail, are obvious fictions — of the 

 kind which the professional story-teller pours forth copiously 

 every day in the Soko in scores of Moorish towns and villages, 

 only adapted, of course, to the requirements of an eager English 

 listener. The names of the reporters are not given, nor are 

 the opportunities they posse'ssed of obtaining the information 

 they convey explained ; while some of the practices they attri- 

 bute to the dwarfs — such as finding of treasure by writing on 

 wood, and the feeding of horses on dates and camels' milk with 

 the view of rendering them swift of pace — I have heard ascribed 

 to tribes in the Atlas that are certainly not composed of dwarfs. 



Morocco is the hot-bed of fable, and infested by the cock- 

 and-bull, and I can picture to myself the grave delight with 

 which the natives questioned by Mr. Halliburton would stimu- 

 late his curiosity and then satisfy it. Mr. Halliburton empha- 

 sizes the fact that he is a Q.C., and accustomed to cross- 

 examination ; but British perjury and Moorish mendacity have 

 little in common, and are to be fathomed by entirely different 

 methods. The way in which he measured the Tangiers dwarf, 

 Jackin (he actually took 2 inches off his height because a native 

 who was present told him that Jackin had raised his heels to 

 that extent while being measured), casts some doubt on his 

 powers of observation ; while the extracts from his diary show 

 that no process of sifting has been carried out, but that every- 

 thing favourable to his theory has been thankfully received. I 



would undertake to collect in Morocco in a month's time native 

 testimony in support of the existence of a tribe of giants in the 

 Atlas, or of a tribe of men with six digits on each hand, quite 

 as specious and convincing as that which Mr. Halliburton has 

 accumulated in favour of the existence of a tribe of dwarfs. 

 Even if the natives interrogated by Mr. Halliburton had no 

 wish to deceive or to please him, much would depend on the 

 intelligence and honesty of his interpreter, and on the exact 

 terms employed. Only those who have tried can realize how 

 difficult it is to get precise information on any subject out of 

 natives of Morocco. 



If the caves in Morocco are to be regarded as at one time the 

 dwellings of dwarfs, then it is clear that dv^arfs must at one 

 time have been in complete possession of the country, for such 

 caves are to be found all over it. The most remarkable of 

 them which I have visited at Tassimef, about two days' journey 

 from Demnat — caves whichEuropeans had never before explored, 

 and which were excavated in a rock by the side of a waterfall — 

 were in many instances too small even for the accommodation of 

 dwarfs ; and as they yielded to our digging fragments of bone 

 and of pottery, it seemed probable that they had been places 

 of sepulture and not of habitation. Such caves have also un- 

 doubtedly been used sometimes for the storage of grain, like the 

 underground metamors ; and the invariable answer returned to 

 our inquiries about their origin was that they had been made by 

 the Ronii, or Christians. Never on any occasion did I hear them 

 ascribed to dwarfs. 



The classical tradition that there were dwarfs in the Atlas is 

 unworthy of serious consideration in the absence of any observa- 

 tion suggesting that it had other than an imaginative foundation. 

 "Nearly all the myths of Greece," says Mr. Halliburton, "are 

 laid in Mount Atlas," and monsters more extraordinary than 

 dwarfs must have dwelt there if these myths are to be received 

 as of historical authority. 



I have tried to prove that the evidence given in favour of the 

 existence of a tribe of dwarfs in the Atlas is utterly trivial and 

 untrustworthy ; and I shall now endeavour to show that the 

 evidence that can be called to discredit that hypothesis is cogent 

 and convincing. The dwarfs are described by Mr. Halliburton 

 as brave, active, agile, swift-footed, as possessing a vigorous 

 breed of ponies, as experts in the pursuit of the ostrich, and as 

 trading in the Sahara and at Tassamalt. Is it to be believed 

 that being all this, and being very numerous — there are, Mr. 

 Halliburton says, about 1500 of them in Ait Messad, about 

 1500 at Akdeed, about 1000 at Ait Messal, about 500 at Ait 

 Bensid, and about 400 in three Akka villages — is it to be believed, 

 I ask, that these swarming and enterprising dwarfs would have 

 allowed themselves to be bottled up in a cleft in the Atlas 

 Mountains, so that only half-a-dozen specimens of them have 

 found their way to the great towns to the north of the Atlas, 

 where are to be found numerous representatives of all the other 

 Atlas tribes ? Is it to be believed again, that the existence of such 

 a peculiar and notorious tribe, known, Mr, Halliburton tells us, 

 to all Moors, should have been concealed from all the inquisitive 

 travellers who have penetrated into the interior of Morocco, to 

 be revealed to Mr. Halliburton standing at its outer gateway? 

 Leo Africanus, whose account of Alorocco is marvellously 

 minute and accurate, and who enumerates its tribes, has not a 

 word to say about dwarfs. De Foucauld, who visited Akka, is 

 equally silent about them ; and so is Rohlfs, who explored the 

 valley of the Dra. Not one traveller in Morocco has ever heard 

 even a rumour or dark hint relating to them. 



Thomson and I spent some months in the Atlas in constant 

 communication with natives of every class, and in all the strange 

 legends, histories, and adventures narrated to us by the camp 

 brazier, in the fondak or the kasha, there was never a distant 

 reference to a Moorish Liliput ; and be it remembered our 

 servants knew that we had a keen eye and ear for curios, 

 human and inhuman. In all our wanderings in the Atlas we 

 never met a dwarf, and indeed, at a great gathering of people 

 at which we were present, at the feast of Aid el Assir at 

 Glawa we were much struck by the height of the men. Mr. 

 Aissa, who is quoted by Mr. Halliburton as having seen one of 

 the tribe of dwarfs east of Demnat, was our interpreter for three 

 months, and conversed with us with the utmost freedom on all 

 conceivable subjects, and he never adverted to this dwarf story. 

 I have had several long talks with Mr. Hunot, whom Mr. Halli- 

 burton also quotes — conversitions covering a wide range of 

 topics, amongst them the origin of the caves already alluded to — 

 and he certainly at that time had no belief that they had ever 



NO. I 160, VOL. 45] 



