DOKO DWARFS. 381 



they were civilized was evident, from the fact of 

 their writing being said to be quite different from 

 the Geez, and it is not a nation just emerged from 

 barbarism that would possess a knowledge of such 

 an abstruse art as that of writing. As to the tale 

 of their being cannibals, I recollected that even at 

 the present day the very same report is entertained, 

 and believed by the Negroes around Kordofan of 

 European habits, and that we ourselves are sup- 

 posed by them to be cannibals. This is, in 

 fact, a charge so easily made, and serves so 

 admirably to heighten the horrible, in a picture of 

 a barbarous people drawn by an imaginative mind, 

 that even among modern travellers we find an 

 inclination to spread such rumours, without any 

 examination as to their correctness, and sometimes, 

 from a hasty conclusion, or an error in interpretation, 

 without any foundation whatever. In this manner, 

 a stigma of cannibalism has been attached to the 

 Dankalli, but which only shows how careful 

 travellers ought to be before they promulgate 

 such strange and absurd stories.* 



* One evening, on my return from Abyssinia, in company with 

 the British Political Mission, a Galayla Muditu appeared in the 

 camp. Around his head was placed the brindled shaggy tail of a 

 hyena, which added not a little to the savage appearance of the 

 man. He squatted on his heels in the customary manner, and 

 most of the Europeans surrounded him, to look at the extreme of 

 barbarism his figure and appearance presented. Several of our 

 Kafilah men joined us, volunteering information ; among other 

 things, it was observed by a slave-dealer, that the man before us 

 "was a bad man " (pointing at the same time to the Hyena's tail), 



