FIRE, COOKING, AND VESSELS. 233 



sucli.^ Father Lombard^ of the Company of Jesus, writing in 

 1 780 from Kourou, in French Guyana, gives an account of the 

 tribe of Amikouanes on the river Oyapok, who are also called 

 "long-eared Indians," their ears being stretched to their 

 shoulders. This nation, he says, which has been hitherto un- 

 known, is extremely savage ; they have no knowledge of fire.^ 

 It is a very curious thing that one of the oldest stories of a 

 race of fireless men is also the newest. In Ethiopia, says the 

 geographer Pomponius Mela, " there are people to whom fire 

 was so totally unknown before the coming of Eudoxus, and so 

 wondrously were they pleased with it when they saw it, that 

 they had the greatest delight in embracing the flames and 

 hiding burning things in their bosoms till they were hurt."'^ 

 Pliny places these fireless men in his catalogue of monstrous 

 Ethiopian tribes, between the dumb men and the pygmies. To 

 some, he says, the use of fire was unknown before the time of 

 Ptolemy Lathyrus, king of Egypt.* His mention of the name 

 of Ptolemy Lathyrus shows that he, too, is quoting the voyages 

 of Eudoxus of Cyzicus. Whether there was such a person as 

 Eudoxus, and whether he really made the voyages attributed 

 to him or not, is not very clear; but his story, like that of 

 Sindbad, embodies notions current at the time it was written. 

 And with such tenacity does the popular mind hold on to old 

 stories, that now, after a lapse of some two thousand years, the 

 fireless men and the pygmies are brought by the modern Ethio- 

 pians into even closer contact than in the pages of Pliny. Dr. 

 Krapf was told that the Dokos, men four feet high, living 

 south of Kafia and Susa, subsisted on roots and serpents, and 

 were not acquainted with fire.^ As far as the pygmies are 

 concerned, there appears to be a foundation for the story, in 

 a race of small men really living there. Krapf was shown a 

 slave four feet high, who, they told him, was a Doko. But be- 

 tween four feet and three spans, the height assigned by Pliny 

 to pygmy races elsewhere,^ there is a difierence. Nor is this 



• Lafitau, ' Moeurs des Sauvages Ameriquains ;' Paris, 1724, vol. i. p. 40. 

 ' ' Lettres fidifiantes et Curieuses ;' Paris, 1731, vol. ix. p. 223. Goguet, 1. c. 

 ' Mela, iii. c. 9. ^ Plin., vi. 35, and see ii. 67. 



' Krapf, Travels, etc., in East Africa ; London, 1860, p. 51, etc. See Pertj, 

 ' G-ruudziige der Ethnographie ;' Leipzig, 1859, p. 248. ' Plin,, vii. 2. 



