6 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



Nyanza " (1866, p. 91), a region where the widespread Akka, or Voshu, are to be 

 found, we are told that " the cattle there are very small. The goats and sheep are 



quite Liliputian." ■ -.r jj 1 / n ^ 



In Ceylon, the original inhabitants of which are the diminutive Veddahs (called 

 often " Devil-dancers " ), there is a very diminutive breed of sacred oxen, for their 

 small size is put down to some wonderful myth about Buddha. These oxen are 

 very nimble-footed, and are used in carriages by the natives, as they can easily travel 

 eight miles an hour. 



A friend of mine told me recently that in a part of Bengal where he lives, there 

 is a very diminutive breed of oxen, which are very swift ; and it is considered by the 

 rich Hindoos the correct thing to have a carriage drawn by six or eight of them. 



But all this was known to the ancients over 2,000 years ago. Ctesias, a physi- 

 cian of Artaxerxes, who travelled in Asia, and described the pygmy race that he 

 there saw, says that they owned diminutive flocks, sheep the size of a lamb, small 

 donkeys and oxen, and horses and mules not larger than a ram is in Greece. 

 (See Ctesiae fragmenta, No. 57, 11, Didot). 



Aristotle states that the pygmies live near the lakes from which the Nile flows, 

 " and this is no fable, for there is really, it is said, a race of dwarfs, both men and 

 horses, which lead the Hfe of Troglodytes." (See Hist. Animal, VOL 2). 



Strabo, who was a sceptic as to the pygmies, though he described small races of 

 men, says of the Western Ethiopians (evidently the dwarfs of the Dra and the 

 Northern Sahara, whom I have alluded to), "their mode of life is wretched. They 

 are, for the most part, naked, and wander from place to place with their flocks. 

 Their flocks and herds are small in size, whether sheep, goats or oxen ; the dogs 

 also, though fierce and quarrelsome, are small " (See Bohn's Classical Library. 

 Vol. HL, p. 270, 1857). 



It was pointed out in 1891, in my " Dwarfs of Mount Atlas," that pygmies are 

 supposed in Northern Morocco and in Nubia to be Cyclops, and that, as the dwarfs 

 of the Atlas, like other natives of Southern Morocco, wear a singular bournous, 

 on the back of which is worked an immense' eye, a yard in length, " the people with 

 the eye " must in time have become '' the people with only one eye." This view, 

 as well as my contention that the dwarfs of the Atlas have little domestic animals, 

 are confirmed by Robert Brown, Jr., who, in his " Neptune," says that the Cyclops 

 of the Odyssey were an agricultural people of North Africa, who had diminutive 

 cattle, the milk of which yielded very rich cream. 



The dwarfs of the Atlas revenged the death of their giant brother, Antoeus, by 

 capturing Hercules, who became the willing slave of their Queen. Under many 

 different names, this great African Queen frequently appears in early Greek 

 mythology. Dating back to an era before the dawn of astronomy, she and her 

 daughter, as Cassiopea and Andromeda, were, with Hercules, placed in the heavens 

 as northern constellations by that father of astronomy. Atlas, who, according to 

 Homer, " knew all the stars, and the remotest parts of the ocean," and who taught 

 Hercules astronomy. " The fat Queen of Fount " still survives on the monuments 

 of Egypt, which, according to Mariette Bey, represent her as a pygmy, and in 

 popular traditions as to the ruins of Poun or Fount, at the head of the Dra Valley, 

 in Southern Morocco, where, in time of drought. Queen Mena is still invoked. Her 

 mantle, no doubt, was believed to have descended on that brave Jewess, called by 

 the Arabs, Queen Kahina ("the sorceress"), under whom the Berbers for a time 

 rolled back the tide of Moslem invasion. A vague idea has for years existed south 

 of the Atlas that Queen Victoria is destined to rule over that country ! 



I have omitted to refer to two curious points : that there are, in several isolated 

 and inaccessible localities in the Southern States, little communities, composed of 

 survivals of those pygmy tribes that have disappeared from the west coast of Africa ; 

 and also that there are on the Atlantic seaboard little ponies, the descendants. 



