xix THE AKKAS 311 



scientific examination of the body was allowed, but whether 

 Chairallah still lives or not I have not been able to learn. As 

 Giglioli has not heard of his death, he presumes that he is 

 still living in Count Miniscalchi's palace. 



One other specimen of this race has been the subject of 

 careful observation by European anthropologists a girl named 

 Saida, brought home by Eomolo Gessi (Gordon's lieutenant), 

 and who is still, or was lately, living at Trieste as servant to 

 M. de Gessi. 



The various scattered observations hitherto made are ob- 

 viously insufficient to deduce a mean height for the race, 

 but the nearest estimate that Quatrefages could obtain is 

 about 4 feet 7 inches for the men, and 4 feet 3 inches for 

 the women, decidedly inferior, therefore, to the Andamanese. 

 With regard to their other characters, their hair is of the 

 most frizzly kind, their complexion lighter than that of most 

 negroes, but the prognathism, width of nose, and eversion 

 of lips characteristic of the Ethiopian branch of the human 

 family are carried to an extreme degree, especially if Schwein- 

 furth's sketches can be trusted. The only essential point of 

 difference from the ordinary negro, except the size, is the 

 tendency to shortening and breadth of the skull, although it 

 by no means assumes the " almost spherical " shape attributed 

 to it by Schweinfurth. 



Some further information about the Akkas will be found 

 in the work, just published, of the intrepid and accomplished 

 traveller, in whose welfare we are now so much interested, 

 Dr. Emin Pasha, Gordon's last surviving officer in the Soudan, 

 who, in the course of his explorations, spent some little time 

 lately in the country of the Monbuttu. Here he not only 

 met with living Akkas, one of whom he apparently still 

 retains as a domestic in his service, and of whose dimensions 

 he has sent me a most detailed account, but he also, by 

 watching the spots where two of them had been interred, 

 succeeded in obtaining their skeletons, which, with numerous 

 other objects of great scientific interest, safely arrived at the 

 British Museum in September of last year. I need hardly 

 say that actual bones, clean, imperishable, easy to be measured 

 and compared, not once only, but any number of times, furnish 



