236 THE PYGMY RACES OF MEN 



the " Arabian Nights," as being as large as the dome of a 

 temple, and the bird large in proportion. The Egyptians, 

 as we have seen, knew the pygmy Akkas, and Egyptian 

 fact was ever the romance of the Greeks. 



Herodotus mentions the African pygmies from beyond 

 the Libyan desert, citing, as is his wont, the accounts of 

 certain travellers with whom he had conversed, and a 

 later Greek writer tells of a pygmy race in India, a state- 

 ment which our present knowledge confirms. It is a 

 curious fact that Swift's Lilliputians are thus traceable to 

 the Central African dwarf race, for Greek legend related 

 that Hercules visited the country of the pygmies, where 

 on waking from sleep he found one division of the army 

 guarding his right leg, another his left, and others his arms. 

 Hercules got up, swept them all into the lion's skin which 

 he used as a cloak, and went on his way, shaking out his 

 small tormentors from their prison as though they were so 

 many ants. It seems fairly certain that Swift derived the 

 initial scene in his story of Gulliver's adventures among 

 the Lilliputians from this legend. 



Miani's pygmies were members of a tribe discovered by 

 the distinguished traveller Schweinfurth, who, in 1870, 

 was the first to visit the country of the Niam-Niam, to 

 the west of the sources of the Nile, and had the honour 

 of showing that the myths of the ancient Greeks as to a 

 nation of pygmies were based on fact, and that the 

 definite words of Aristotle as to the existence of these 

 pygmy people on the upper reaches of the Nile were 

 correct. Schweinfurth found to the south of the Niam- 

 Niam country a tribe of full-statured negroes called the 

 Mombootoos, whose chief, Moonza, kept close to the 

 Royal residence a colony of pygmies who were called in 

 that country by the name " Akkas." Schweinfurth 

 ascertained that they are spread to the number of many 

 thousands along the borders of the great Congo forest, 



