•a

Ml -a.

V si

Jl u

z >a

a.
to

a
<

d
1/5

A R Acr: () [• p\ (; M i ]:s

WAS IDl N [;

N ^ ' ! V n I A }^^ '. x! R y\ A .X i ) S 1 ' .'\ 1 ;^,

O.W V/A ,N rs III-' PKi)!''''.\::iij^s lli^ilfim], ,'.,nr,' i.Vi S"!.ikH

VAP2HS ON UfHBR SUBJFi:rS

}<. < ;, I i .A f ! i :! < Ti ^;^;

I , . ^(,.•• .■ , :. ' :.Vt :■■■ (..

'..Vr.

■. .( r-'i \,.i . - .'51/. !

» (V: 'U'l'

..-Ao tV.S!: • y^i■:;^■

(■-,, ...

> V SI »S-. . ! JWITi!!).

^ u

-1 ;:'

■5*

(^r

A -i

HOW A RACE OF PYGMIES

WAS FOUND

North Africa and Spain

WITH COMMENTS OF PROFESSORS VIRCHOW, SAYCE, AND STARR

AMD

PAPERS ON OTHER SUBJECTS

R. G. HALLIBURTON

Q.C, D.C.L., Medallis of Ninth Congress of Orientalists (1891), F.R.G.S., Fellow of the Royal Society
of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen ; Fellow of American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science; Cor. Mem. of Canadian Institute, the Giographical Society
of Lisbon, and La Sociiti: Kidiviale de Geographic, Cairo, Egypt.

Toronto
Printed for Private Circulation by The Arbuthnot Bros, Company, Limited.

1897.

Entered according to Act of the Parliament of Canada, in the year one thousand

eight hundred and ninety-seven, by Robert Grant Haliburton,

in the office of the Minister of Agriculture.

"EXTRACTS FROM MR. HALIBURTON'S WRITINGS."'.)

By Professor Virchow.

"the dwarf races of morocco and SPAIN.

" The writings which have come to my hand consist of a somewhat large num-
ber of shorter and longer communications, which in a somewhat varied manner,
partially in clironological order, partially in the order of matter, give the testi-
monies obtained respecting the existence of dwarf races, or, as the writer says, of
' racial dwarfs,' in the Atlas country. A copious re-statement of these testimonies,
which must have been of great value, since the writer had yet to combat with the
unbelief of his countrymen, appears for the present unnecessary, since a large number
of unexpected testimonies have come up to vouch for the correctness of his state-
ments. Of course it was long before a kind of certainty had been acquired, for
after the writer first learned through a man from Sus of the existence of ' a small
people ' in southern Morocco, it was almost ten [six ?] years before a European
became convinced, through autopsy, that the question related not merely to a few
scattered dwarfs, but to a whole tribe. Many a credible statement had already
drawn attention to a desert district situated on the south side of the Great Atlas,
between the Dra Valley and the Sahara, separated from Sus by the Lesser Atlas,
and which is called by a peculiar name, 'Akka.' The people there were also called
by that name long before Schweinfurth's attention had been drawn to the Akka
on the Upper Nile. Here it may be added that, according to other statements, the
western Akka belong to the tribe Ait Wakka. . . . The small Haritin are
called Baraka, also Ulad Mebrok, while the name Nezeegan is said to be used only
in connection with the dwarf tribe which inhabits the town Nezeeg, near Sus.

" Mr. Halibufton did not go into this region, which seems to be inaccessible on
account of the turbulent character of its population. Mr. Harris, with Mr. Cun-
ninghame Graham, followed up the statements of the Scotch Mission (at Morocco
City), and he succeeded in getting sight of fourteen dwarfs in Amzmiz. His report
in The Morocco Times of 26th January, 1893, is reproduced in The Academy of 19th
August, of the same year. Amzmiz is a town on the way to Mogador, only two
days' journey distant from the capital. In the neighborhood is found the tomb of a
saint, Mulai Ibrahim, to which the people resort from, a distance. Here some
explorers saw the small folk, men and women, who were bathing naked in the holy
stream. It appears, however, that not a single European has entered the land of
the dwarfs yet.

" The statements of all eye-witnesses as to the physical condition of these dwarfs
agree. Their height is given as 4 ft. 6 in. from 4 ft. 2 in. ; also ' not higher than
four feet.' 'The women are the size of a little girl; men with beards, that of a
small boy.' They have a peculiar reddish complexion ' like that of the Redskins
of America'; quite different from that of the Moors, Arabs, blacks, etc., according

(i) Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellsehaft fur Anthropologle, Etbnologle und Urgeshlchte ; Redlget
von R. Virchow, SItzung von so Jull, 1895.

(15)

•• Extracts from Mr. Haliuurton's Writings."

t«» others of a ' mahog.iny color.' They arc broad and muscular ; tlicir hair is
■ crisp and curly.' ' short, woolly, like that of the blacks.' In appearance they are
so much alike that it is dil)icult to distin({uish one from the other. They speak
tlie Shilhach lanRUaRC of southern Morocco (Schloh), but with klicks. A cording
to one statement there arc said to be more than 1,000 of them at the River Uora
(or Didu): in other places 1,500, etc. As Leo Africanus calls Ura ' Dara,' the
writer thinks that the Darae, or Gaetnli Darao. who are said lo have live' on
the Steppes of the (ireat .Xtl.'is, and who were regarded as bclonKinp to the Libyan
race, may have been related to them.

" I pass over the statements respecting names of places and tribes, which nearly
every witness has given somewhat ^liflfercntly. The f.ict that south, and to some
extent on the heights of the Atlas a dwarf race is living, that has woolly hair and a
reddish complexion, seems to be beyond doubt ; and we must certainly give the
credit of that discovery to Mr. Haliburton, who first proved the existence of these
dwarfs.

" IHK RUINS OF FOUNT IN DRA VAI.I.KY.

" A special interest is due to the discovery of these dwarfs through the manifold
references which the writer has tried to harmonize with old Egyptian traditions,
an endeavor in which no less an authority than Professor Sayce stands by him.

" Mr. Haliburton found that the old Egyptian god ' Didoo,' which Brugsch is
said to have called a Nubi-Libyan Deity, must have originated south of the Atlas,
where rivers and tribes bear the name (the River Dirt, or Didan, Ait Didi, .\it
Hedidoo. .\it Doodoon, Did, a source river of the Dra, and the River Didoo, or
Dora). The god Didoo-Osiris is said to be known in that region as Didoo-Isiri,
and in the Dra Valley are said to be found the ruins of an old town of image-wor-
shippers called by the natives Ta-Pount, also Anibna Didoo (the Town of Didoo).
Thus the query arose : Should ' the Holy land of Fount ' of the Egyptians be looked
for here, and not at the Indian Ocean ?

"The statements of Mr. Haliburton about Ta-Punt (Arab, Tabount) are some-
what obscure. It appears that the ruins lie m the upper Dra Valley, in the district
of Warzazat. In them are found small figures with horse or bull heads, which arc
called Beni Mahkerbu, Beni Hazor, and Beni Kerbu ; and also Patiki, just as the
small people are called. These figures are said to be 18 inches to 2 feet high, half
human, half animal, some with the body of a human being, and the head of an ape,
or dog. The small people adore Didoo-Isiri. In ancient times there was a treasure
of gold buried in Fount.

" Professor Sayce reminds us that Schiaparelli discovered a grave near
Contra-Syene. in which an inscription says that Hurkhuf. therein buried, had been
sent by Pepi II. (sixth dynasty) on ah expedition to the south, and that he had
brought back from the king of Ammaan, among many other kinds of gifts, ' a
Dcnga dwarf from out of the Land of the Holy Spirits, who could dance divinely,
like the Denga dwarf which the late Chancellor Urdudu brought from the Land of
Fount in the time of King Assa (sixth dynasty).' This expedition was one thou-
sand years earlier than that of Hannu, which itself is to be placed one thousand
years before the celebrated expedition of Queen Hatasu. The latter, however, took
quite a different direction from that of Hannu, which was towards the west, ' The
Holy West.' ' The Land of Truth.' (2)

"Already Bunsen searched for this Put or Fount in Mauritania. (3) Mr. Halibur-

(2> A very malformed dwarf, named " Wambutti," which was reported to be a Mogrebin, aeeompanled
the KToap of Denka blacks exhibited In Berlin In 1889.

((3) Until Ebers suijgested that Fount was situated in the far East, Fount, Fut, or Phut, was held to be
connected with Libya, and, according to Bunsen, "is admitted to mean, in the strictest sense, Mauritania."
J. G. Matter, in hit Die Semiten, says, " The old suggestion that Put refers to the Libyans Is confirmed by
ChampolUoo, mod also by Bunsen (L, 572)."— R. G. H.]

•• liXTKACTS 1-KOM Mk. HaLIUUUTON's WkITINGS."

«7

ton brings also the story of Jonah and the Perseus Mytluis in connection witli that
country.

" In Ta-l'unt is said to be tlie grave of ' the l-'at gueen ' lileina, or Ulenia Mcna.
Kvcn now the dwarfs of llie Dra Valley are called i'uiii, or (Ju Meiia (' Mena
piM.i)lc'). Two Uafur blacks, whom the writer saw in Cairo, spoke of Tu I'ount
and lllcMia Mcna ; and the name Uidoo inspired them with dread. (He docs not
recall the Carthaginian Dido).

"DWARK SURVIVALS IN SPAIN.

" Finally, Mr. Ilaliburton also claims that survivals of dwarfs exist in Spain, both
in the Pyrenees and in oilier parts. He appeals to explorations of the British
consul at Barcelona, Mr. Macpherson, who found in the eastern Pyrenees, in the
Val de Ribas, people of i m. to 1.17 m. in height, copper-colored, with broad, tlat
noses, and red hair, who are .ictive and robust,

'■ Previous to that some similar statements had been made. An accurate descrip-
tion of the people of the Val dc Ribas (Province of Gerona) is to be found in
' Kosmos," May, 1.S.S7. Macpherson found them, especially in the Collado de
Tosas ; and he lays stress on the fact that they have often been considered to be
cretins, but that both cretins and dwarfs arc found in that district. Their hair is
described as bein^; ' maiiogany-colorcd wool.'

"Unfortunately Mr. Ilaliburton from ill-health was prevented from confirming
his conclusions as to them by personally en(|uiring on the spot as to these matters.

" Prom the comments in the preccdiiiK paper, written by Herr von Lushan (on
Mr. David Mac kitcliie's paper on • Pygmies in .Spain," in the International
Archive for Ethnography) it seems very desirable that a specialist well versed in
such matters (cretinism and dwarfism in the Pyrenees) should carefully enijuire
iiUo this subject on the spot." (4)

r(4) Mr. MacRltchle's visit only lasted two ortiiree days, as it was cut short by the state of the weather
and of the roads. For the same reason he was unable to visit the village of Aledo, on the summit of a moun-
tain near the railway from Carthagena to Grenada, which is inhabited by "little people" and Gypsies. The
dwarfs live in houses resembling " weems," and built of large stones covered with earth. Their Industry, like
that of some of the Atlas dwarfs, consists of making mats from Esparto grass. In 1892-3, Mr. Walter B
Harris, author of " Tafilet," and other books of travel, was urged by me to make enquiries at the Val de
Ribas, and I offered to pay the expenses of such a visit ; but he declined.— R.G.H.]

COMMENTS OF PROFESSOR FREDERICK STARR.

[An extract from " The i'ygmy Kacos of Men," North American Keview, Mar., itiijC.I

" When De Quatrelagcs wrote his work in 1887, a presentation of the views of
the ancients and a stiuly of African itigrillos and Asiatic iicgrilos was exliaustive mi
tlie s'lbject of tlie pygmies. But now the (|uestion presents other phases. In
1888 and i8yi, in papers by Air. R. G. iiahburton, tlie existence of a race
of dwarfs in tiie Atlas Mountains of southern Morocco was announced. A
strangely acrimonious and personal discussion followed, which was prolonged
through a number of years, it seems that now we must add a fifth — a Northern or
Moroccan group to the four groups of .\frican pygmies already known. Mr.
Ilaliburton, prevented by ill-health from journeying to these pygmies, lost no
opportunity of securing information. From sixty-five diflferent persons he has se-
cured a considerable mass of evidence. Villages or tribes of these Atlas dwarfs have
been located in the districts of Akka and Sus, in the Dra Valley, in places to the
south-east of Dra and at other points. A number of different names are applied to
them — the Little Har.-»een, Akkas, Nezcegan, etc. They are reported to be about
four feet high, with a reddish (" mahogany ") complexion and short woolly hair.
They are active and brave. They often perform as acrobats, are ' good at single-
stick,' and are ' skilled in hunting ostriches, the feathers and eggs of which they
sell to Arab traders of the Sahara. They are not diligent at manual labor, but
know cobbling, tinkering, etc. They are reported to use in ostrich hunting small,
swift horses that are called " those that drink the wind.' These are fed on dates and
camels' milk, and are lean and look worthless. These pygmies are said to use
poisoned arrows. When at home they wear a woollen shirt embroidered at the
front and back; red leather leggings that nearly come to the knee, and a knife with
a curious crescent-shaped handle. They live on milk and camel-flesh ; the meat
is pounded, salted, and packed away in go.atskins. A handful of this will suffice
for a man's subsistence two days. Authorities differ in regard to the religious be-
lief of these dwarfs ; quite possibly the populations really differ among themselves.
Some are reputed to worship Didoo Osiri ; most of them are considered Christians
or half-Christians, ' as they shave their faces and the front of their heads.'
. . . The big neighbors of all these little people look upon them with curi-
ously mingled feelings of reverence, dislike, and fear. ' They bring good luck
and are not to be talked about.' They largely get their living by writing
charms and telling fortunes; 'they know the sta's well'; and find money for
people by writing on wooden slates. Such are the dwarfs of the Atlas. Is it not
likely that their ancestors — and not those of the Akkas of Central Africa —
are the dwarf Troglodytes, who, according to Herodotus, captured the five young
Nasamonians ? On an Egyptian monument, peihaps four thousand years old, is a
quaint picture of a dwarf with the word 'Akka'; before that picture was painted,
perhaps a thousand years before, an inscription (discussed by Professor Sayce)
tells of a Denga dwarf ' who danced divinely' like one that had been brought still
earlier to King Assa of the fifth dynasty. These thre? dwarfs of Egyptian picture

(18)

Comments uf Professor Frederick Starr.

»9

and inscription prubably came from this Atlas region, perhaps irom the very dis-
trict calkU Akka to-day. 'i'iic rccurrcnci; ul tiiis iiami: Akka in two widely sepa-
rated regions in connection witii dwarf peoples is interesting, and suggests ancient
relationship between Scliweinfurtli's Central African and lialiburton's Moroccan
dwarfs.

" The iiuestion of dwarf races in Europe is now under discussion. The Roman
anthropologist, Sergi, has found small skulls and skeletons in the old Kungaas of
Russia, from the Chersonese to Novoladoga, and from Kasan and Astrakhan to
Minsk. Remains of this same pygmy race have been found by him in ancient graves
in bicily, Sardinia, and about Naples. This population was certainly shorter than
the Mincopics of the .\ndanians, and was more like the nigrillos than the uegritos.
Still more, both in Russia and in Italy he finds evidence of this pygmy folk in the
living population. In this connection ne emphasizes the fact that in certain district!
oi Italy from thirteen per cent, to sixteen per cent, of the persons examined by the
recruiting officers fall below the required stature. He describes this European
pygmy race as from 1.25 metres to 1.5 metres in height, with a brain capacity from
300 to 400 cubic centimetres less than the Italian average. Sergi suggests a theory
in regard to this Italian and Russian population. lie believes in an early migra-
tion of pygmies from Africa northward into the Mediterranean islands, Italy and
eastern Europe, in May, 1894, Dr. Kollman, of Basel, Switzerland, called attention
to little .skelttons and skulls found at Schweizerbild, near SchafFhausen. The skele-
tons were apparently of Neolithic Age. Two kinds were found, some of ordinary
sized individuals presenting the types still represented in Europe ; others were o(
little people, averaging perhaps 1.4J4 metres in stature. Out of thirteen skeletons
of adults found, four were small. Kollman believes these were the same as Sergi
found further south.

" Some years ago a Prof. Morayta wrote a paper concerning the Nanos of the
Pyrenees. The paper attracted no attention, and perhaps was never printed in
full. Mr. Ilaliburton learned of it, and has looked into the matter.

" Morayta's description of Nanos is at times, almost word for word, the same
as the description of cretins, as given by Baillarger and Krishaber in the Diction-
naire Encyclopcdiquc des Sciences Medicales. It is not then strange that many have
believed the Pyrenean dwarfs to be not a pygmy race, but cretins. It was neces-
sary that some competent person should look into the question on the spot. Ac-
cordingly, in May, 1894, Mr. David MacRitchie visited the region to look for
Nanos. Bad weather compelled a short trip, but in four days he found eleven cases.
Some of these were plainly cretinous. In concluding his article (Archiv. fur
Ethnographie , Vol. VIII.), he says: ' I am inclined to regard them as the remnants
of a race. Undoubtedly cretinism and goitre enter into the question. But of the
eleven dwarfs whom I saw in the Ribas neighborhood, only two were affected with
goitre. It is hard to believe that the little woman who figures first on my list owes
her small stature and her other characteristics to the working of disease. .And if
those peculiarities are simply the outward signs of cretinism, and if cretinism is due
to environment, how comes it that other people, living exactly the same life, are
absolutely free from any such defects of mind or body ?' Mr. Haliburton calls the
cretin theory "hasty." He says: 'The Dcnga dwarfs are the same now as five
thousand years ago. We do not hear of goitre' (which is curiously relpted to
cretinism ; the children of goitrous parents are likely to be cretins ; cretinism is
never found in regions or among populations where goitre does not exist) ' among
the robust and warlike pygmies of the Great Lakes and Congo, who are flesh-
eaters pnd hunters. T am persuaded that if a child of a Pyrenean cretin were to
be fed on tiesh food and made to lead an active lite, he would never show any
trace of goitre on arriving at manhood.' The paragraph shows a lack of clear
knowledge regarding goitre and cretinism, but the line of argument is clear. He

a>> CoMMI'.NTS ()|- I'KOl'KSSOU I'^RUUKKICK StaRU.

iil.si) siiys: ' NrilluT iirliiiiMii nor any idlur ilisiasc laii lum niiliiiaiy Iuirt)|)cans
iiiti> |)y({iiiii's, vvitli bioaii, Hal ii(i.si.'.s, a cuiipii loloiitl i(iiii|)k'xii)ii, and nialuiK->iiy
I'lilorcd wool.' . . . ' L ii'Uni.sni ilufh nol attack lliLir laixcr ni'iKlilioi's, who
for lUiiiiy ccnttiiics liavo livril near tlicin. LiTliniiini in tlic I'yrciiccii and Alps, it
svi-ms to nil', is ranal in its iliariulir, and is not a disiasi', l)nt a symptom ol
(Icciulcticc in a nii>ril>und raco ol dwarls, who in the nci-SKCs ol monntams aii'
slowly K^>i)*K tliroii«h llu' pioic^^ ol dym^ ont throtiKh (;iiliiiK vitality, just as many
(.'(.'nttn'ics a^o ihi'U' race nnist havi- dud onl on tlu- plains of I'^nropc and Asia.'
. . , ' I'lic niicstioii ol the ryiciUMii dwarls is a dcliiati' one. 'A'"' nci'd nuuli
further study before liicy can be admitleil into the list ol line pynniics. Just now
Mr, Ihddiintoii has sciiired liii'ts ol dwarf pfojdes in liie ItlacU I'nrcst, the Vtisnes,
and in I'risiaii districts. In Ana article we do not pretend to ^o outside the soni.i
toloKiciil held, otherwise we should i)reseiit tiie very interestiiiK matter drawn by
Air. MacKilehiv and Mr. llaliburton, liom linguistics, ii'^end and lidU lore, rela-
tive to i'iuropean pygmies or " little people." '

"At the last two meelniKs ol the American Association for the Advancement ol
Science, Mr. llaliburton lias broUKhl up the (|iieslion of pyK<>)y peoples in Amerie.i.
Hints uf such are not wanting. .Some limits alioiit the iiimed lnnldiuKS of Yucatan
and Central America : ugK*.'-'>l that they wete linill by little people. .\t Ll.\inal there
is a ' house of the dwarl,' ,md at (.'o/.iiniel are little biiildiiiKS. lu iWy lirigham
wrote in his ' Ciuateinala ': ' It would cctainly be inlerestiiiK to le.iiu why in.uiy
of liic temples have doors, passa^ses, and even rooms, that .1 man id ordinary
stature cannot stand erect in.' I'he I'cabody Museum e.\plor,ilions in I'liitr.d
America liuvc broiii^ht to light a number of representations of dwarfs, ilalibiir-
lou describes one ol these as having 'a sipiarc, broad, and llat face : MoiiKoliaii
eyes ; bulging cheeks, more prominent than the broatl and llal nose." Various
writers tmvc cuinineiited upon little Mexicans. In iK8.> a baud of little people in
vaded llritish Honduras. They were from four leet to lour leet six iuclies in
stature, and are said to be warlike, to make human sacrilices, to use the blow ^un
and poisoned arrows, and to be makers of I'aiiania hats. Mrs. Le I'longeon nicn-
lions a dwarf woman captured in Yucatan. Dwarf tribes are said to live, or to
have lived, in ilrazil, Uruniiay, and other parts of South America.

"At Mr. Ilalibiirton's siiKKCstioii our party last siiminer looked in Mexico for
evidence of pyK"iy (leoples there. No very delinite information was secured. At
A^uas C'alientes, with a population of perhaps .(o.cmk), we saw seven adults, none
more than four feet eiKlit inches in stature, in a single half hour. An Indian at
Lak*' L'hapala declared thai there were little jteople in the motiiitaiiis somewhere
in Jalisco or C'oliinn. Near Aytzcapatzaleo, .i suburb of the City of Mexico, are
some full-blooded Indians who retain their old dress and are very conservative,
and of little stature; they are probably Otoniis. Little people live near
Cliolulu. All of tliese bints may lead to somethiiiK; when followed up. Meantime
the (piestion whether there are pynniy tribes in America seems to be really
propounded."

PAPERS ON PYGMY RACES.

Jt^^

NOTES ON MOUNT ATLAS AND ITS
TRADITIONS.

By R. G. Haliburton.

[From the ProceedinRS of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. XXXI., Montreal

Meeting, August, 1882.]

In December, r88i, to while away the time at Tangier, where continuous east
winds for weeks kept invalids within doors, I turned my attention to the traditions
and folk-lore of the natives of Morocco. The field was represented as a barren one.
I was told that the country was inhabited mainiy by the Berbers (or Barbars,
whence the name Barbary) ; that, though composed of different tribes, they spoke
substantially the same language ; and that, having adopted the religion of Islam,
they had forgotten their old traditions and superstitions. The Rifilians, known
still in history as the Riff pirates, inhabit the northern portions of Mount Atlas.
To the south of that mountain is a tribe of excellent artificers in brass and copper,
called Shelluhs, Shilhas or Shilhachs, who inhabit the Province of Sus, and are
therefore, called Susis. There arc other tribes still farther south.

It soon leaked out that the faith of Islam sits very lightly on some of the
Susis, and that many of them really have no religion, or have some ancient super-
stitions which they preserve in secret. WI.ether they really believe the myths and
traditions which they repeated to me, or merely regard them as our peasants do
their fairy tales and folk-lore, it is hard to decide. One of them told me he was
not sure that he was not as much of a 'CRristian as of a Mohammedan— a state-
ment that, if overhead by the Moors, might have cost him his life.

I made careful enquiries from several Rififians, a Maltese who had travelled
in the interior of Africa, disguised as a Moor, the town time-keeper or astronomer
at Tai.gier, some Jews of Casablanca and Ophran, two Susis at Tangier and one
at Mogador, nearly all of whom, though illiterate, and unable to read Arabic, were
learned in oral tradition and Berber folk-lore.

The results of my enquiries proved that there is a marvellous collection of
ancient myths, legends, etc., among the Susis, which carry us in succession to
Britain, Greece and Rome, Phoenicia and Egypt, and even to Babylon, whdle one
very remarkable festival seems as if it had reached them from the Aztecs, or
vice versa.

(t3)

ill!

24 Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions.

The Great Mother of the Greeks, Daiuater, appeared as Ta Mala, " the mother,
who presides over the corn fields." Apalo, " a good god, who comes and plays on
a harp," suggests the ciuiuiry, is not Apftlo the original form of the name of the
god Apollo ? (i)

At certain intervals, as the Greeks believed, Apollo used to desert his shrines,
and go far off to the blessed Hyperboreans of Mount Atlas, with whom he danced
and sang until the rising of the Pleiades.

The ancient Greeks themselves .seem to have regarded tlic Atlas country as
the favorite abode of Apollo. Atlas was a Hyperborean, and the western Ethio-
pians who inhabited that country were also Hyperboreans, a semi-divine nice,
from whom the Greeks derived many of their most ancient rites. It is supposed that
they were called Hyperboreans from their enjoying a climate where the cold north
wind was unknown, (2) but the same name would be even more applicable to the
people of the interior of Africa.

A Susi described to me a staff ornamented with ribbons, which is called a
fhurosis ! The names, too, of Mata, Kera and Zerea recall that of Ceres. The
" Great Mother's " image is bathed at the end of her festival, ;is it was in the holy
island of the Germans, at the River Almon, and in Athens at a feast of Minerva,
which was, therefore, called Plynteria. We are even reminded of a similar rite at
the end of the feast of the god of agriculture of the Fijians.

The god Adon is still believed to have been slain by a boar, and heaven and
earth all weep for him. " He was greatly beloved by Tachal and Isai." It seems
that Some festive dirges, like the Maneros of the Egyptians and the Linus of the
Greeks, which were sung at their banquets, can still be traced in the Accasili Maneros
and the Walinas of the Susis. Diodorus Siculus tells us that in the Atlas country
a divine youth, Hesperus, went up at night to the summit of a mountain to study
the stars, and a great wind carried him away. To this day (I am told by the Susis)
" the women go up on the mountains with music, weeping, in their search for
Walinas. He was the brother of Panis, an old god who invented pipes called
Kraf or Kalifer, and who was also called Itada."

One of the Susis asked me if I would like to hear " the story of the man who
wished to steal the cows," and, upon being asked to proceed, retailed a familiar bit
of classical mythology : " There is a great mountain in the sea, where there were
three hundred cows, the property of Geryon, (3) and when the sun set they used
to appear. It was a very rich place, and a navigator, who wished to steal the cows,

(i) Apio is the Etruscan name for Apollo.

(2) The ancients believed in tiiree zones, the highest of which was above the winter winds, and was the
abode of the gods. Olympus was such a paradise.

(3) There is a tribe in the Atlas called Ait Gerouan.

Notes on Mount Ati.as and Its Tkaditions.

sailed thither and entered a ^reat cave, from which ho never came out ; and his
name was Herakles."

There can be no r|UCStion that this mountain, tlie true Mount Atlas, was the
Peak of Tcneriffe, in which there is a vast cave that has never been fully explored.
The Atlas country was the scene of" the labors of Hercules and of the feats of
Perseus, who turned Atlas into a mountain by showing him the Gorgon's head.

Herodotus says that the dress of the statue of Minerva was borrowed from the
Atlas country, where clothes of kid-skin were made and colored with great skill.
Such dresses may still be seen in the Museum of Las Palmas, taken from the
mummy caves of the Guanches. He also suggests that the story of the head of
Medusa being encircled with snakes, arose from the head having been placed on a
shield ornamented by the Atlantes with a fringe consisting of long strips of
leather, which at a distance might well look like snakes. These fringes arc still
used by the Susis.

Even the Greeks admitted that one of their most unintelligible myths, that of
the fifty daughters of Danaus, who were doomed in hell to the task of filling
sieves with water, came from Africa, and they, therefore, gave the brother of the
Uanaides the name of Egyptiis, though modern Egyptologists have failed to meet
with the myth in the religion of the ancient Egyptians. Many years ago a devout
believer in "Arkite lore " detected an allusion to the deluge in the name of Danaus,
which he traced to da)i, " water " or " rain." If he had called the fable a " rain
myth," he would perhaps have been nearer the mark. It was evidently carried by
the natives of the Atlas to Greece, where in time its original meaning was for-
gotten, for we still find it in the folk-lore of the Susis, one of whom told me that
" there is an old king in the stars of rain, who has many dancing women, who
hold sieves filled with water ; and when he wishes them to dance, he thunders.
The louder grow the peals, the quicker grows the dance, during which the sieves
are emptied, and the water falls to the earth in a thunder shower." (4)

These are a few only of the traditions and beliefs that carry us to Greece and
Rome. We meet with Phoenician traditions also as to " Isiri, who taught the
three letters"; while the belief in an imperfect creation, in which the forms of
animals and men were blended together, recalls a similar tradition of the old
Chaldeans (s). Of Egyptian ideas there are perhaps traces in a belief as to seven
brothers who sail in their ship across the sky, and carry with them the spirits of
the dead.

(4) Grimm sajrs that the Pleiades (those stars of rain) were called in European mytholoRy "The
Sieves." This myth may explain why throughout Africa, when it thunders, it is said " heaven beats, "ii.r., beats
time to the dancers.

(5) According to one of my Susi informants, the Aiissawa rites synibolire this idea by men represent-
ing wild beasts, while the fat Moor on horseback represents the Good Spirit who civilized primeval man.
This was the origin of mumming among the ancients and modern savages.

a6 Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions.

The Susis have a May Day festival, at which the " pole of Mala " is set up, at
the summit of which is a doll composed of heads of wheat. Saints climb up the
tree and scatter the wheat among the people, calling it " our life," " our susten-
ance." The Mexicans used to erect an enormous cross, the symbol of rain, and
on its summit was placed a similar doll, which, when reached by those climbing
the pole, was scattered among the people, who treaiured the fragments as some-
thing sacred, while the deity represented was called " our life," " our support."
The coincidence is certainly very remarkable, for precisely the same words were
addressed by the Iroquois to the three beneficent maidens who brought each her
gift to mortals, the maize, the squash and the bean.

Herodotus has mentioned that the peculiar cry of the women at the rites of
Minerva, called ololuzein, was borrowed from the Libyan women, " who sing it
very sweetly." I have Jicard this peculiar chorus or cry, which consists of a quick
repetition of the word alo — alo alo alo alo. I am told that it is raised at the end
of the feast of Mata.when water is poured over the image of the goddess ; and
am reminded of the shout that resounded throughout Fiji at the close of the feast
of Ratimaimbulu, who no doubt was the same as the god Alo-alo of the adjacent
Friendly or Tongr. Islands. It would be exceedingly interesting if it should prove
that the cry raised and carried from town to town in Fiji was, like that at the
feast of Mata, alo alo alo alo.

If there is any foundation f ir the belief of the earliest nations, and of the Susis
themselves, that that co'-.ntry was once the seat of an ancient civilization, how can
we account for the early rise of a great commercial and maritime people near
Mount Atlas ? The answer may be given in one word — gold. One of the natives
examined at Mogador was Mordecai Rhibo, a Jew from Ophran, which he de-
scribed as a very ancient town, which from remote ages has been the entrepSt of
the Timbuctoo gold trade. At that point the caravans separate, and go in different
directions, one to the city of Morocco, and the other beyond Tripoli.

There are very ancient Jewish tombstones there. There is also a vague tra-
dition there that there is somewhere in the interior a tribe of Jews who are war-
like and independent, and who have no knowledge of th'^ Second Temple,

I ventured to suggest, when I rea3 my paper, that we have good reason to
believe that the Ophir of the Bible and Saba or Sheba may yet be traced to that
part of Africa. This has since been confirmed by my finding it. Procopius that
one of the two great divisions of Mauritania was called Zaba. He also states that
there was in his day (circ. A.D. 550) a very ancient city in Numidia, on the borders
of Mauritania, called Barium, which from the most remote times had been
inhabited by Jews, who had never paid tribute to any one. There was there, too,
a very remarkable Jewish temple, which the Jews believed had been built by King

I
I

Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions. 9f

Solomon. As the adjoining country was called Zaba, and as no trace of the first
temple has ever been found in Jerusalem, it is not impossible that this was the
temple to which the Queen of Sheba paid her famous visit.

It is probable that nomad Berbers, known as Sabaeans, hcid, in the days of
Abraham, as they still have, the monopoly of the gold and ivory trade of central
Africa, and with their caravans carried its products, including slaves, parrots and
incense, to central Asia. (6) The Sabaeans were, like the Susis, astrologers, necro-
mancers, traders and robbers, believing in the seven heavens, and worshipping
the seven stars. It has been conjectured that in the Puranas traditions of an
earthly paradise differing from that of the general Hindoo system seem to point
to Africa (see Smith's Dictionary of Bible, tit. " Eden "). But the place to which
we must turn cannot be, as Smith's article suggests, in southern Africa, but rather
in north-western Africa, where the garden of the Hesperides and the Islands of
the Blessed were situated.

The Susis have a belief in seven heavens called Saba Samagwats. Saba means
seven ; the other word, by the aid of a pre-Malayan language in Malacca, can be
interpreted, as it is the same as samangats, " the spirits of the blessed," who
reside in Pulo Bua, " the fruitful island in the west." I have also been shown a
diagram of the mystic ladder for the descent and ascent of souls, called Acacol,
representing " the path of the spirits " (Asero). It is like the ladder with seven
lamps that typified the seven " houses " or " gates of heaven " in the rites of
Mithra. These Susis are necromancers and astrologers, resembling the gypsies in
looks, habits and ideas. One of them at the outset offered to bring up any spirit
that I might wish to do my bidding, an offer that recalled the question of the
Witch of Endor, "And the woman said, whom shall I bring up unto thee ?"

To show how indestructible the peculiar traditions of these people are, I may
mention that a Susi told me gravely of a remarkable race at the River Byblah
(Byblus ?), " which is near the centre of the world, somewhere between us and the
Soudan," who have the faces of dogs. Herodotus, 2,500 years ago, was told pre-
cisely the same story, a belief in which among the Egyptians can be traced in
their mystic cynocephali. (7)

It may seem premature to endeavor to account for this strange collection of
myths from apparently all parts of the world. A few facts connected with the
history of Mount Atlas may be suggestive of interesting enquiries.

(6) There Is a priestly tribe near the northern limits of the Sahara, called Oulad-hti-Saha, or Sabarrn,
who guide caravans to Timbuctoo, steering by the Pleiades, not by the Pole Star. When a SusI Is In great
peril, he ejaculates " Oulad-bu-Saba," just as an Italian peasant In a like case Invokes the saints.

(7) Mr. Walter B. Harris (see " Dwarfs of Mount Atlas," p. 3) says : " I have often been asked by
Moors whether it was true that there was a race of people In the south known as BenI Kerbou, with dogs'
heads; and also a race with one eye (Cyclops). Benl Kerbou means 'the sons of dogs'" (see "Dwarfs of
Mount Atlas," pp. 28, 29, 30). At Pount, In southern Morpcco, there are little Images with heads of dogs,
called " Makerbu." There was a people there called by the Greeks " Macrobu " (the long-lived), for the
Greeks, like many of our college professors, derived everything from Greek,

a8 Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions.

The earliest traditions of Greece point to Mount Atlas and to the garden of
the Hesperides, which was on the flank of that mountain. The Susis told me that
their people is the most ancient in the world. Diodorus Siculus says that the
Atlantes claimed to be the most ancient of nations, and that their country was
" the birthplace of all the gods of antiquity." Solon was told by the Egyptian
priests the same tale, that the Atlantes were the first great commercial and mari-
time people, and exceeded in wealth all the great nations of later times, and that
they extended their concjuests as far as Greece ; but in consequence of a udden
irruption of the sea, the great island they inhabited was buried under the waves
in a single night. History proves, too, that the Berber race was once dominant
over northern Africa, and it is probable that they supplied the Hycsos, or Shepherd
dynasty, that ruled over Egypt for centuries, and who have been connected with
the Moors and Berbers by Movers.

One of the names of the Atlantes was Maxyans, which is possibly derived from
a word in Arabic meaning " sheep." Atlas, who, as a daring navigator,
" knew all the depths of the " ocean," and who taught Hercules astron-
omy, was also called " a shepherd." The Susis (at least the nomiad portion of
them) are still called by the Arabs Dcni Baccar, " the sons of the cow," the pastoral
people. Even the word " Sos," according to Herodotus, meant in the sacred
language of Egypt " cattle."

It has been conjectured that the light-haired race, that from the most remote
ages occupied the Atlas country, lost their language and adopted the Berber tongue.

That Tarshish was a port in the Atlas country seems exceedingly probable. It
is admitted that it was situated either in Spain or somewhere on the Atlantic sea-
board. It was apparently the Birmingham of early ages, for its brazen dishes were
an extensive article of export even to Phoenicia. We have now no trace of such an
industry in Spain, but we have the clearest evidence that from the most remote
times it flourished in Sus, the people of which seem to be a survival from the
Bronze Age, for their principal trade is the manufacture of brass dishes, which they
chase with marvellous taste, and which are perhaps known to us as the " beaten
dishes" used in the Temple of Solomon. Leo Africanus says that Ifran was in his
time (A. D., 1550) a seat of this industry, from the existence of extensive copper
mines near that place. Though it is only known throughout Morocco as Ephran,
its inhabitants call it Ophran, and such is the name given to it in the latest English
map of that country. (8)

To the ancient Jews it was probably known as Ophir, that mysterious city which
tradition says was the capital of the Sabaeans, and connected with Tarshish. That

(8) The far-famed " brazen gates of the wall of Agloo " were made at Ophran, sometimes called Ophiraa.

Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions. 29

tlie latter was u port of Op.ir or Ophran, and situated on the coast of Sus (9).
seems probable from some curious incidents in the history of Jonah, who instead
of Koing eastward from Jerusalem to Nineveh, went to the remotest west, in a ship
bound to Tarshish.

To my surprise one day, u Susi told me that a great prophet was swallowed
I)y a large fish and cast up by it on the coast of Sus, and 1 at iirst assumed that
he had picked up this story from some Jew ; but I have since discovered thaX it
is an ancient local tradition as to Hercules, the hero of the Atlas, who must have
sailed from a port in western Morocco, for on ancient maps we find a harbor there
called " the port of Hercules." The two stories (whichever may have been the
original one) point to a tradition connected with the Atlantic and the coast of Sus.

Many myths have a local origin in some natural phenomenon that primitive
races cannot explain, except by the supernatural. We may find the key to this
venerable tradition of antiquity as to Hercules in the existence, near the place in
(lucstion, oi .sharp pointed rocks, which are fatal to whales that may be driven on
them by a storm. Hercules, we are told (see Took's Pantheon, Part H, ch. i ; Ovid
•Met., 11) "delivered Hesione, the daughter of Laomedon, King of Troy, from
the whale in this manner ; ho raised, on a sudden, a bank in the place where
Hesione was to be devoured, and stood armed before it ; and when the whale came
seeking his prey, Hercules leaped into his mouth, slided down his throat, destroyed
him, and came away safe."

The tradition, which I had heard from a Susi, also existed in the days of Leo
Africanus, who tells us that in the town of Messa, the name of which means " Lord,"
and at which the native^ believe that the promised Messiah will appear, is a very
ancient and sacred temple, the rafttrs of which all consist of the bones of whales,
in commemoration of a prophet having been cast up by a whale on the adjacent sea-
shore ; and that in confirmation of this belief, the Moors pointed to the fact that
all the whales immediately die that pass to the right of the temple. The historian
was inclined to think that there might be something in the story, from his seeing
at the time a dead whale floating near ; but a Jew ridiculed the superstition of the
Moors, and explained the origin of it — by the existence and effects of the reef in
question— that bank, no doubt, that Hercules raised suddenly for the destruction
of the whale. I think there can be little question that this ancient whalebone temple
of Jonah was originally built in honor of Hercules, the hero of the Atlas country ;
and it is possible that the story connected with it may have been carried back to
Palestine by the Jews of Ophir, and have been preserved by them in the history
of the prophet Jonah.

(9) Sus, a country bounding on the Atlantic, and south of the Atlaa, is called TaSus ("the Sus"). The
River Sus is called Assi/ na Ta-Sm (" the liver of the Sus ").

30 Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions.

May not they also have brought back from Ophir the Book of Job ? That
work is a singularly laithful picture of the productions, animals, traditions, man-
ners and astronomical ideas that are still to be found south of Mount Atlas (lo).
There to this day wandering bands from the desert sweep down upon the herds-
man and the shepherd, and rob them of their herds and flocks ; and the ostrich, the
hippopotamus, the nionsters of the ocean, the birds, the beasts, the treasures of the
mine, and the stars that are described by the patriarch, are still familiar to its in-
habitants. Even that auspicious constellation whose " sweet influences " are cele-
brated by him, is known by the same name to the Susis, who call it Kimah (" a
furrow" or " cornhill"), or "the stars of tillage" as it is termed by the far distant
Bechuanas of South Africa (Silemcla).

The people of Sus also believe that there is a certain night in the year when
the stars hold a solemn festival, in which all the angels and the spirits of the great
kings of old take part. The very words of the song of the Pleiades, who are known
in the New World as well as in the Old as " the dancers," " the Celestial chorus "
of the Greeks, "the Heavenly Host" of the Hebrews, and "the seven dancers"
of the North American Indians, are familiar to ears that can catch " the music of
the spheres," and have been repeated to mc by one of those favored mortals, a Susi
wanderer from the Sahara :

" Oh Moon, oh Mother, we hold our feast to-night,

We are dancing before God, between heaven and earth,"

words that recall Milton's allusion to those " morning stars that sang together with

joy" at the creation,

" And the Pleiades before him danced,
Shedding sweet influences."

also <■* • »-

" The gray dawn and the Pleiades,
Shedding ' sweet influences '."

This celestial festival evidently takes place on that night in November, when
the full moon and the Pleiades are on the meridian together, for there is a Susi
love song,

" Oh come to me my love, and long remain.
For the Pleiades are meeting the moon to-night."

On that very night in November some tribes of the Australians still celebrate " the
sweet influences of the Pleiades," and hold a grand corroboree in their honor, for
" they are the children of the Sun and Moon," and " are very good to the black-
fellows."

(lo) Job is held In great reverence In southern Morocco, and Is the patron saint of more than one
Kibe. We meet with one called Beni JoHb (" the sons of Job ").

Ill

IMP

Notes on Mount Atlas and Its Traditions.

3«

Even the early Egyptians seem to have borrowed many of their religious ideas
from an older civilization in the Atlas country, for it ha* been conjectured that all
the niaRical features of the ritual of the Egyptians, and their belief as to the dangers
attending the passage of the soul to Hades, were derived from the people south of
the Atlas (see Smith's Diet, of the Bible, tit., " magic ").

It is surprising to find that a country, venerated in the days of Homer as
peopled by " the just Ethiopians " who were nearer to the gods than other men,
and at whose banquets even Jupiter was sometimes a guest, a country, too, asso-
ciated with paradise and the abodes of the blessed, should, a few hundred years
after his time, have been lost sight of by the world, (ii) Herodotus does not refer
to its past history, and learned little of the country south of the Atlas. Strabo says
that in his time it was a terra incognita, for armies and even travellers had seldom
reached it, and the few natives that visited Greece either invented fables about it,
or were unwilling to tell what they knew about it. To this day it is closed against
Europeans, none being able to visit it except by the hazardous experiment of pass-
ing for a Moor.

Leo Africanus, however, himself a Moor, who has described that country as it
appeared in his day, and has told us how the Arabs had ravaged it, destroying the
cities, and burning the ancient books of the Berbers, states that near the walls of
one town, the stones of which, as large as those employed in the construction of
the Coliseum at Rome, had defied the fury of the invaders, gold and silver medals
are to be found, with characters which he had in vain endeavored to decipher ;
and that everything indicates that at a former period these cities must have been
the homes of a prosperous people.

This paper is the first attempt that has been made to draw attention to the tra-
ditions of a country that must once have played an important role in history. It
is possible that future and more careful enquiries as to it may throw much light
on the commerce, and perhaps on the origin of the Jews, and on many obscure
points connected with early civilizations and mythologies ; and that they may even
prove that the belief of the Susis and of the old Atlantes, that their land was " the
birth-place of all the gods of antiquity " was not a baseless one.

I intend, if my health permits me, to revisit that country, and to follow up
these researches.

(ii) Ionian and Carian mercenaries were largely employed not only by the Pharaohs, but also by the
Libyans, thousands of years before the time of Homer, who must have been familiar with the history, the
traditions, and the position of the Atlas country. The lonians divided the world into four quarters, one of
which was not Egypt, but Libya. In time these mercenaries ceased to be employed In North Africa, and as
the Carthaginians kept all strangers out of that country, the later Greeks lost almost all knowledge of the
geographical position of Mount Atlas, and even transferred it and its myths to the Danube, and to the
Caucasus. Hence we have the Amacons of Libya and of Asia, and an African and an Asiatic Herculet,
etc., etc.

DWAKF RACES AND DWARF WORSIIir.*')

(Keatl befora the NInib CoiiKresi of UrlentalliU, Seplembtr a, iHgi.)

(':!

The singular, and at first siglit incredible, fact, that the existence of a race of
dwarfs, under four feet IukIi, in the Atlas Mountains, only a few hundred miles from
the Mediterranean, lias fur tlirce thousand years at least been kept a profound secret
by the natives, was first brought to the notice of the scientific world by a paper of
mine, read, in my absence, at the Bath meeting of the British Association in 1888.
The information which had been collected by me was confirmed by that subsequently
obtained at TIemcen, Algeria, by Miss Day, and at Tangier by the Kight Hon. Sir
John Drummond Hay ; but it seemed prudent to defer publishing the paper until
the point could be cleared up— why do so many of the Moors dread strangers know-
ing about this pygmy race ?

After a lapse of two years I was able to visdt that country early in November
1890, and remained until June 13, i8yi, seven niontiis in all, and during that period
managed to collect very conchisive evidence both from natives and from Europeans
who resided in that country.

In Equatorial Africa it has been observed with interest that the larger races
near the dwarfs resemble them in color. In the Dra Valley, south of Mount Atlas,
the dwarfs are called " the Little Haratin." " The Large Haratin " (or, mor-
properly, "the Larger"), who were known to the ancients as the Melano-Gaetuli,
or the Gaetuli-Darac, i.e., Dra-Gaetulians, have a reddish-black comolexion from
intermarriages between the dwarfs and a Nigritian race, or a yellowish color from
a cross between the dwarfs and light-colored tribes.

The larger Haratin are generally about five feet high, though many tall men
among them are to be found. In Sus, which lies between the ocean, and Dra and
Akka, the dwarfs are called Aglimen, and their half-breed offshoots are rather a small
race with a light red complexion, a tribe of acrobats called Ait Sidi Hamed Ou

(I) Portions of my paper read before the Congress of Orientalists (1891), which appeared in The Times
of September 3rd, 1891. and for which a medal was awarded by the Congress. The parts which referred to
early dwarf races in America and the West Indies were not reported, nor that portion which traced the
wide-spread belief In the Old World and In the New that the first Creation produced only monstrous or
malformed mortals, to the existence of early dwarf races. The evidence whicli was relied on as to the
existence of dwarfs in the Atlas, and which was submitted in MSS. to the Congress, Is printed for the use
of those who may be Interested in the subject. (Sti " Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.")

(3«)

DwAKF Racks anu Dwarf Worsiiii'. 3j

Moussa ("the tribe of our Lord llaiiu-d. the son of Moses"), The dwarfs some-
times iicrform with them, avoidinR the coast towns where Europeans arc. These
acrobats from Morocco, who are smiths and tinkers, are, according to Brugsch
Bey (" Egypt imder the Pharaohs," Vol. I, p. 5). represented on the monuments
of the Fourth Dynasty as performing in llgypt ! How long previously they had
been known to the Egyptians cannot be conjectured. No doulit centuries, perhaps
thousands of years ; nor is it likely tliat they limited their wanderings to l-'gyi)!.
They prfibably found their way to the southern and northern shores of the Medi-
terranean. Troy then did not exist. The Greeks wero savages.

The Sidi Hamed On Moussa, who is referred to by Mr. Ilunot. told me an
amusing story of an unprofitable performance of his troupe near a village of Daggata
(Mhuk Jews), not far from Timbuctoo. The acrobats were surprised at nobody
coming to see their performance. Birt they were still more surprised when they
discovered that the whole population of the place had run away, believing that the
acrobats were jins and imps who were amusing themselves. This will show what
a profound impression must have been made by these acrobats, if they found their
way to Greece at the remote period when they were depicted on the monuments
of I-lgypt.

The dwarfs of Mount Atlas, called Patiki, may be the dwarfs whose grotesque
images were called by the same name — Pataeki, and the Cabeiric worship of which
may have been an importation from the Phoenician colonies south of Mount Atlas.

It is worthy of note that the scenes of nearly all the earliest myths of Greece
are laid in Mount Atlas (called by tlu' natives Ida-na-Dauran or Ida-Dran — i.e.,
Mount Taurus), or in the Island of Crete, the first landing place for immigrants
from Libya. Many are the traces of that migration in Crete and its myths. For
instance, Ida is not a Greek but a Shilhach word, the eciuivalent of the Latin Mons.
There arc scores of Idas in southern Morocco, though few, if any, north of the
Great Atlas. The Greeks may have mistaken the Shilhach word for a " mountain "
for a name, and thus have made their mythology centre in Mount Ida — i.e.. Mount
Mons. The caves at its base became the workshops of mysterious cave dwellers,
who established there their magic forges, and were called Idaei Dactyli (i) ; and
were so revered that they were included among the great gods, the Cabeiri, some-
times called in Greek Apataeki (2). It is somewhat startling, in this late age, to
meet south of Mount Atlas with original versions of familiar Greek myths. Wc
may from many others select one which was a very notable one among mytholo-
gists. Mohammed-ben-Ibrahim, a Bent Bacchar, of Massa in Sus, says, " Theba is
to the east of Paradise Mountain " (a hill near the source of the River Did). " It

(0 The name Dactyl (literally "a finger"! may have meant a "dwarf," and have been a synonym of
Pygmy (literally " a fist "). A dwarf is " a Hop o' my Thumb " ; in Kaffir, " a Thumb.'

(a) This is an instance of the use of a, or la, before Berber names. Sus is always TaSiis," the Sus."

DwARi' Racks and Dwark Woksiiu'.

!|!l! ;

was bnill oriKiiially l)y Kadinoii ; Kadiuoii is 11k> man who IoiikIU tin- Kiotind l)y
the size of a cow's skin, and wlio hinuKlit lu-oplo in lioxcs to Ta I'lint, and took
others hack. Ho was in tlio hahit of hiding the cows nndcr the ^ronnd."

Prohahly on l)oth sides of llie Atlantic llie ancient dwellinRS cut in cliffs were
made hy dwarfs. The little race to the west of " the sandy ridge " south of the
Atlas, who captnrcd the Nasanionian explorers, are cilleil iiy Herodotus Troglodytes,
The cliffs of the Atlas Mountains are fre(inently dotted with cave dwellings which
must have hecn used hy a small r.ice, as (hey are not more than live feet high.
Tliey are now no longi-r used, though 1 am told some of these dwarfs on the river
Dora, or Didoo, in the Hani Mountains, near Tinzone, arc still Troglodytes. They
were proh.ihly the trihe of dwarfs which ancient writers say owned a reiuarkahly
small hreed of horses. The ponies of the dwarf? near the Sahara are famed for
their endurance and speed, and are therefore used hy them in hunting ostriches.
Rahhi Juda, a .Shilhach Jew, of Ternata, in the Dra Valley, says, " the little people
are not Moslems. It is supposed that they worship Oidoo Kiri. They kce|) th.-ir
feast hy themselves. There are many of them near the Soudan ; the Arahs fear

them and i);iy to he allowed to pass througli tlu-ir country. Pheir horses can

do without water for four days and are called dwiminagh (they that drink the
wind)."

The dwarfs are very holy men, tliough they shave their faces, and do not love
the Prophet as much as they should. Some say th.at they are fhristians ; others
.issert that they are idolaters and " worship Didoo Isiri." Sometimes I had little
dilliculty in getting the Moors to s|>eak of them, though they have exclaimed with
.surprise, " How do you come to know .iiiything ahout them ?" Mnt superstitious
natives, and C!*peiially the Haratin living ne.ir Tamanart in the Dra Valley, have
often cut short the conversation on my pressing them to tell me as to the nunihers
and place of residence ot the dwarfs, etc. One said, " It is a sin to speak ahout
them to you. I shall say nothing." Others say, " God has sent them to us. We
must not talk ahout them." A young Jew now living in Manchester, hut a native
of Mogador, said that the Moors worshipped these Harakers, and would not talk
freely ahout them to the Jews. He had trie<l to find out ahout them, hut without
success. He had constantly, when a hoy, seen an old llar.iker who died at .\logador
ahout eight or ten, years ago, who was looked on as a great saint, and as such
was kissed on the shoulders hy the Moors as they passed him in the street. These
dwarfs are supposed to hring good luck to the towns where they reside, and arc
guardians and protcctorsi, resemlHing in this respect the Palladium of the Trojans.
If strangers were to succeed in carrying them out of the country, good luck would
depart with them. It is prohahlc that some such superstitious helief w.is at the
hottom of the difficulty which puzzled and baffled Schwcinfurth in his attempt to

UwAKF Racks anu Dwari' Worsiiii'.

get a sinhl of tlic dwarf Akkas i)f tlic Monbutto country, tlic kinff of wliiili sent
away by iiinbl bis roKimciit oJ dwarfs so as to kcci) tboin out of tlie way of liis

visitor.

In I'.iiiDpc :iii(l Ilritain tlic dwarfs of i-arly agos art- ri'inoinl)crcd as sniitbs.
artitiiors and inaKii-ians, l)Ut no oiu> ba» conjoctured wlu'ri- tboy can bavo come
from. If the Ura was, as it is believed by some to bave been, a great prebistoric
workshop, the nirniingliani of tlie Rronze Age, tbe problem could be easily
settled. The little and tbe larger Haratin are stil! creat worker.-^ in metal, magi-
cians and potent (b)ctors, whose staple remedy seems to be safe if not sure. Tbcy
make little books, which .ire canied .ibont as cb;irms or are placed in water, which
has marvellous virtues that cm cure all tbe ills that llesb is beir to. Wherever
the Ilaralin went they nnist ha\'e "astonished tbe natives," as they wear a pecidiar
baik, which has a large eye on its back, about a yard in lei\gtb. It is prol)able
that the earliest Ir.iditions of Greece described wandering bands of masons .ind
smiths ;is " tbe men with tbe eye," which in time may bave become " the men with
only one eye "—the Cyclopes. A kbanif such as they we.ir is now in my pos-
session. Tbe skill of the modern Cyclops is devoted to siidving deep wells. Tbe
wdl-sinkers of Morocco come from tbe Dr.i to the cities north of tbe .'\tlas, and
are still to be .seen wearing their Cycloi)e;m baik. (,0 In northern Morocco there
is a belief that there is under the ground a race of little nu-n who can be beard at
work. Two centuries ago it was said that this belief existed also in Wales.
" Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle," in bis work pid)lisbed in i^xji on " Tbe
Secret Commonwealth," which treats exhaustively of " tbe subterranean people,"
their appearance, habits, dwellings, etc., says (p. 14), " b'ven fuiglisb atitbors rel.ite
<if Barry Isljind, in (ilamorganshire, tb'.t laying your ear mito a clift' of the rocks,
blowing of bellows, striking of hammers, clashing of armor, fding of iron, will be
heard distinctly ever since Merlin enchanted those subterranean wights to .i solid
forging of iirms for Aurelius And)rosius and bis Ibitons till be returned. Which
IMerlin, being killed in baltell, and not coming to loose the knot, those active
Vulcans .ire ly'd to a perpetual labor." The mention of tbe.se little Vulcans reminds
us th.it the father of the gods, the oldest of all, Vulcan or Patab, tbe eighth of the
earliest .system of I-lgyptian deities, was a Pataecus, and was represented as a
dwarf. Classical mythology has made Vulcan lame and deformed, while his work-
men, " tbe seven Cyclopes," were supposed to represent tbe earliest race of men,
those progenitors of mankind whom the Hindoos worship as the Pitris. If he, the
greatest, was a dvva.f, the other seven must also bave been dwarfs. What a begin-
ning for the gods of anti(|uity— seven dwarf masons with their pygmy ma.ster-
mason ! Well may tbe Haratin boast, as their ancestors, tbe old Atlantes. did,

(3) Dr. Oliver sayi that the " all-seeing eye " It a Masonic tymbol I

I''i

Dwarf Races and Dwarf Worship.

that they are the oldest people in the world, and that all other nations got their
gods from them.

Professor Sayce, in his excellent note on Herodotus, B. III., Chap. 2,T, says
that Ptah is represented as a dwarf (see also Rawlinson's and Kenrick's notes) ;
and Egyptologists admit that the oldest type of the divinity in Egypt was that of
Ptah. " the Creator " (identified by the Greeks with their Hephaistos, " the Architect
of the Universe ").

He also points out, what I think is a new idea, that from the name Ptah, or
Patah, is derived tnat of Pataeki ; and that those little-known groups of divinities
called Pataeki or Cabeiri were sometimes classed together. But there is a con-
firmation of his view of the connection of names between Patah and Pataeki in the
remarkable fact that Patah and the Pataeki were dwarfs. Nor was this earliest
form of the Godhead, the deification of pygmies, confined to Egypt, for Selden
says that all the greatest gods of Palestine and Syria were Pataeki, and he shows
that little images of them were supposed to bring safety and good luck, and were
placed on prows of ships by the Phoenicians, while the presiding genius and pro-
tector of the banquet table of the Greeks was an image of a pygmy Hercules.

Probably in Rome they were the venerated Penates, who were cla9sed among
the Cabeiri, and were household gods, which, under different names, were wor-
shipped among so many nations of antiquity. It was, perhaps, a feeling that it was
unlucky to speak of these pygmy deities that has thrown a cloud of mystery over
the CabirJc divinities of antiquity. Movers, in the first chapter of his Phonizier,
says that that group of deities called Dactyls, Cabiri, Corybantcs and Cyclopes
were similar to those old Germanic divinities now known as Kobolds. I had not
read this passage when I suggested that they were like our Fairies and Brownies
The Monbuttoo regard the Akkas " as a sort of benevolent spirits or mandrakes,
who are in no way detrimental." (See " Heart of Africa," II., 145.) A reference
to Mr. MacRitchie's interesting little work, "The Testimony of Tradition" (Paul,
Trench & Co., 1890), pp. 131-137, shows that the memory of a dwarf race of smiths
was once reverenced by the Irish, whose old " God of the Bru of the Boyne," seems
to have been a Vulcan.

The seven companions of Vulcan, his masons or workmen, the Seven Cyclopes,
who, as we have seen, are included among the dwarf Pataeki, derived their name
from their having had only one eye each. The same myth is related about the
Arimaspi, and they, too, strange to say, were workers in metals or a mining race ;
and is still told, as we have already seen, respecting the dwarfs both of Equa-
torial Akka and of Akka in the Southern Atlas. Writers on the Isle of Man
and the Highlands seem to agree that the fairies represent an extinct dwarf race.
Mr. Mac Ritchie seeks for existing representatives of it among the Eskimo, Lap-

Dwarf Races and Dwarf Worship.

'■m

landers, and even the distant Ainos. It is possible that we may find some survivals
of this race of dwarfs without going as far north as the Arctic regions, or as far
south as the Albert Nyanza or the Congo.

We need not regard with incredulity, or " with a disdainful smile," the ven-
eration of the Moors and of the Monbuttoo for these dwarfs, for the very same
superstition still exists among some of our peasantry, though it is now between
one and two thousand years, at least, since the dwarf race in Britain died out, and
was represented by ' the Little People," that haunt the fairy " knowes" or mounds
of Wales and Ireland. " I am a Welshman," writes Professor Sayce, September
27th, " and was brought up in a Welsh village, so I know that the Kelts do not
like to mention the fairies. My own nurse's brother had been carried off to fairy-
land for a year. Do not forget that the Basques have a Cyclops myth of the one-
eyed Tartaroa. You will find the picture of a dwarf from the twelfth dynasty tombs
of Beni-Hassen, given in Wilkinson's "Ancient Egyptians " (Birch's edition),
II., 70."

If any practical joker were to visit (after due notice of his coming and its
professed object), all the "fairy mounds" in secluded districts in Wales and Ireland,
and were to pretend to go through a form of exorcising and banishing " the Good
People" from their ancient homes, he would create a storm among the peasantry
that would rather astonish him.

THE DWARFS OF MOUNT ATLAS.

The paper read on this subject at the Oriental Congress on September 2, has
attracted so much attention, and created so much discussion, that it is desirable to
[[ have the statements of natives and others on the subject placed within the reach of

:i those who arc interested in such questions, especially as The Times has summed

j up the proof of the existence of a dwarf race south of Mount Atlas as consisting

of the statements of " two or three stray Englishmen," while another paper has
asserted that only " two or three natives could be found " who would admit that
they had any knowledge of such a race. The best way to comment on such reck-
less criticism is to publish the evidence.

But before going into the testimony in support of the existence of this race of

I dwarfs, I may refer to an unwillingness on the part of many natives to speak of
;j them, arising probably from the belief that it is not lucky to do so, which prevents

hjl an Irish peasant from mentioning the name of the " fairies," who are only called

Ihj the little people," "the good people," "the gentry," etc., a vestige of the in-

fluence in the earliest ages of a worship of a dwarf race

In 1881, I commenced investigations into the beliefs, traditions, and ethnology
of the races that inhabit the country south of the Great Atlas, many of whom come
to northern towns in caravans, or as acrobats, or wandering fortune-tellers, or cun-
ning workers in silver, brass and leather. Up to that date, and for several years

II afterwards, I was the only person who had made these people a subject of study.
The Moors north of the Atlas seemed to know as little as Europeans do of that
southern land. While jotting down some of the legends which I was told by a few

j |j j of the people of Sus or Dra whom I examined in 1882 (for many of them would

lllj 1 11 I tell me nothing, or were timid or stupid), mention was made of the " little people"

jjljl I jl|! by a Susi that I met at Tangier, and also by a Taleb that was examined at Mogadon

ii* ' According to the first, " Ayusa or Idyl is the name of the small people that bring

down Isiri and take him back." The second said, " On that day the Adusal (a small
people) will appear." I never suspected that these expressions referred to a dwarf
race, but assumed that they alluded to cherubs or fairies.

The next time that I heard of these " little people " was while in Algeria, early

in 1888. A remarkably intelligent Susi, who had lived as a valet or cook in England

(38)

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

for some years, was engaged by me as a servant. He spoke English as fluently as
an Englishman, and had become a Christian, and notliing delighted him more than
to talk about his country and its people. His native place was loo miles east of
Massa, i.e., about two days from Akka. (i)

One day he volunteered an account of the feast of Ashura, where the people
that attend the fairs are personated with great skill. Among the persons repre-
sented he named "Akkas," and Jews, and was proceeding to describe the peculiar
dress and look of the Sus Jews, when I asked him " Who are these Akkas ?" He
then described them as a race of little people not higher than four feet, and of a
peculiar reddish color, " like that of a Red Indian of America," and differing from
the complexions of Moors, Arabs, negroes, etc. According to him they were very
brave and active, and dressed more like the French than the Moors, as they wore
a woollen shirt embroidered at the neck in front and on the back. They had red
leather boots or leggings coming up nearly to the knee, and their knife or dagger
had a peculiar crescent-shaped handle. They made spindles and other small
articles, which they sold at the markets. Their name was derived from their living
in Akka, the country adjoining his own.

The story seemed so utterly incredible that I did not believe it, for I felt con-
vinced that if there was a dwarf race so near the Mediterranean, the world would
long ago have heard of them. He himself did not seem to think they would in-
terest me, and merely mentioned them casually; and had I not brought him back to
the Akkas by my wish to know who they were, ha would have passed on to other
subjects, and I would never have suspected that he had alluded to a dwarf race.
On one point I knew he was correct, viz., that there is a district, a very barren
one, between Dra and the Sahara called Akka.

The conversation was forgotten, and probably never would have been recalled
to my mind but for my seeing in The Times and other English papers, about two
months afterwards, that Emin Pasha had sent to the Royal Society skeletons of two
Akkas, a dwarf race living at Akka, in the Monbutto country, who are the smallest
people in the world, as they are not much over four feet in height. The com-
plexion of these Akkas was described as " like the color of slightly roasted coffee."

Hamed was sent for, and was asked to repeat his description of the small peo-
ple about whom he had spoken to me. His account in no way varied from that
which he had previously given. He could not read, and therefore could not have
heard of the Albert Nyanza and its district of Akka with its dwarfs, for up to that
time but little had been known about these Akkas in England, except through the
works of one or two travellers. I had, unfortunately, when I was reading " The
Heart of Africa," and had reached the amusing picture of a Bongo native in the

(i) The Lesser Atlas divides Akka firom Sus, but there are several roads through passes, nblch connect
them.

40 The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

second volume, been interrupted by somebody, and had never read the rest of the
book. The discussion about the dwarf skeletons, and the description of Stanley's
dwarfs, have made everyone familiar with the name of the Akka dwarfs near the
Albert Nyanza.

I immediately wrote what had occurred to several persons In different towns
in Morocco and Algeria, and asked them to hunt up some natives of Akka or Dra,
or a Jew from Ophran, and to find out whether they had ever heard of a very
small race cf Jvvarfs in that country.

The first to reply to the letter was the Right Hon. Sir J. Drummond Hay, who
was spending the winter at Tangier, and who had for many years been connected
with Morocco as our minister to that country. His first letter, dated May loth, was
as follows :

" The information you had received regarding the race of men dwelling at

Akka, a barren district adjoining the Dra country, is quite correct. They are

i|i}l': described to me as a race about four feet high, broad and muscular. They are

Ij called Nezeegan. The Moor who gave my informant this account oT these people,

said they live on milk and camels' flesh. They pound the flesh and salt it. The

pounded meat is put in goat skins, and a handful of this stuff will suffice as the

sustenance of a man' tor two days. They are renowned for strength and courage.

jili^ljlll "The Dra Moor said that a European, dressed as a Mohammedan, and calling

himself a Sliereef, visited Akka, and found there a slab with an inscription on it,
and carried it off. The Akka inhabitants did not discover, until after he left, that
he was not a Shereef, but a Christian disguised as a Mohammedan. I have no
notion who this traveller may have been."

The second letter is dated June 6th, 1888:

" With reference to the queries put in your letter of the 26th ultimo, the only
further information I can obtain is that the small race arc of a mahogany color,
i ji}]! with hair like that of negroes, and that they use the Shilhach language, but that there

is a slight difference in the dialect from that spoken by the population of Sus.
Berber and Shilhach are as alike as the Portuguese and Spanish languages. My in-
formant now tells me that the tribe to which the Akka people belong is called ' Ait
Wakka,' and that they live in a district adjoining the Dra country.

" My informant says that the Akkas have all a similar cast of countenance, and
that a stranger can hardly distinguish one adult male from another."

Again, oni the 23d June, 1888, he wrote: "My informant says that the dwarf,
or small race, were not negroes, but dark, with features so alike that it is hard to
know one from the other. Hair crisp and curly."

After my paper was read before the Congress of Orientalists, he wrote me:

" During my long residence in Morocco, upwards of half-a-century, I ought,

!,..

'ill

li!i

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

as may be expected, to be well acquainted with that country and its inhabitants.
Though I have travelled frequently in the interior where the Moors and Arabs re-
side, I have never ventured to penetrate into the mountainous districts inhabited
by wild Berber races, except on the northern slopes of the Atlas. The Berbers of
the south differ from the northern people as much as gypsies do from the Eng-
lish peasantry.

" They are an intelligent race, skilled as smiths, tinkers, well-sinkers, makers
of leather, acrobats, jugglers, fortune-tellers, and professional seekers for buried
treasure, and are in possession, as it has come to my knowledge sometimes, of
documents and oral traditions about treasure hidden by their forefathers. You
were the first to make the Berbers dwelling on the southern slopes of the Atlas a
special subject of study, when you commenced researches ten years ago, and since
then you have, in a great measure, been alone in enquiries regarding their legends
and beliefs, and have devoted, to my knowledge, much time to patient research, and
have taken infinite pains, at some considerable expense, to obtain information as
to this unknown field. With regard to the present controversy raised regarding
the existence of a dwarf race, I remember in 1888 you wrote to me, from Algeria,
about your servant, a native of Soos, having stated that there was in Akka, the
country adjoining the Soos district he came from, a race of dwarfs about four feet
high, having a reddish complexion, differing from that of the Moors, Arabs,
Berbers, or negroes. It is, as you are aware, a fact that there is a district
called Akka near the Albert Nyanza with a precisely similar race of dwarfs, a coin-
cidence which we can hardly suppose to be a chance one. I had also a late oppor-
tunity of questioning a native of Dra on the subject of dwarfs, and he gave without
hesitation, and as I am led to believe truthfully, the same account as my previous
informant, whom he did not know I had examined ; but he said that the Dra
dwarfs are called the Little Harateen. He described them as being about four
feet high, with a red complexion and short woolly hair. He said ' they are very
active, and are more ancient than the larger Harateen, who are sprung from them
and resemble them in color and ways, but are taller from intermarrying with other
races. The small people are called Baraka or Oulad Mebrok, the Blessed Tribe,
or Sons of the Blessed, and are supposed to bring good luck, so we do not like
to talk about them.'

" It does not appear that the dwarfs are as numerous in North as in Equatorial
Africa, but of their existence I have little doubt. I have met individuals occasionally of
this race, as described, before I knew of the interest which is at present attached
to these people, and so had not taken an opportunity of conversing with them.

" I regret to have seen articles and letters addressed to public journals calling
m question the accuracy of the interesting account you gave of the Dwarf Race in

Thb Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

Illllli

Morocco at the Oriental Congress. T hope you will ere long publish for the
benefit of the literary world the result of your researches regarding the history of
the people dwelling un the southern slopes of the Atlas."

Miss Lena Day, belonging to the ^fission to the Berbers at Tlenicen, in reply
to my queries, wrote : '" In reply to your letter, I have done my best to obtain in-
formation in answer to your questions, but as the time you have given me is rather
short, I have only been able to find one man from Sus, but he told me that the
Akkas are not dwarfs, but on the average five feet high ; that the word you men-
tion, Nezeegan, is the name of a tribe of dwarfs living in a town called Nezeeg,
thence their name ; that the town Nezeeg is very near Sus, whereas the tribe of Ait
Atta (not Akka) is some distance from Sus, though its people do frecjuent Sus for
commerce. The NezecRan resemble the Arabs in every particular, but their height
IS less than four feet. Their liournous is made of three and-a-half yards of material.
According to this man's account the Ait Attu resemble the French nation in ap-
pearance and dress, and it is said that they were once Christians, but are now
Mohammedans, governed by a Cadi, and under the power of the Sultan."

Again on the 29th June, 1888, she wrote : " I hav delayed answering yur let-
ter, hoping to get more reliable information, but I have only succeeded in seeing
one man from Sus who has been at Nezeeg. Both men are agreed that the dwarfs
are not negroes."

This information obtained by separate enquiries at Tangier and TIemcen strongly
confirmed the story told me by my Susi servant. It was clear that the dwarf natives
of Akka, near the Victoria Nyanza, must belong to the same race as the little natives
of Akka in the southern Atlas, as they were precisely alike in every particular, ex-
cept that the one race is savage and the other is civilized. As they are both red-
complexioned, it is possible that their name may be derived from "akka" (red).
HI It was evident that the subject ought not to be neglected, but that somebody

|S ought to look into it in Morocco. From the state of my health I did not feel

p disposed to engage in an investigation which would need many months of steady

:i\i work. Therefore, while passing through Paris, I called on a well-known Egyptolo-

!!! gist. Professor Maspero, and urged him to take up the archaeology and ethnology

lliil|fi of the southern Atlas, and I offered to meet him at Mogador, and to bring the

Ipj natives to him who could tell him the legends and folk-lore of that region.

'ls!l|ii|||

lifj He was told that the god Didoo (called by Brugsch Bey a " Nubi- Libyan

mi'i'

divinity"), one of the oldest of Egyptian gods, must have come from the country

south of Mount Atlas, for rivers and tribes bear his name, viz.: The district of Did

j!!; or Didan; the Ait Didi, or Didoo; Ait Hedidoo, and Ait Doodoon; the River Did

(which by its junction with the Idermi forms the Dra), and the River Didoo or

Dora, in the Black Mountains, near Tinzone, a range of the Bani Mountains ;

ill

The Dwakfs of Mount Atlas.

while the name of the god Dichio Osi.is is known south of the Atlas as Didoo
Isiri. It has since transpired tiiat "'an ancient city of idolaters" in the Dra Valley,
now in ruins, and called Ta-Punt by the natives, is also called " Anibna Didoo"
(" the town of Didoo "). It was pointed out tiiat the traditions and beliefs of
the people of that country had never been studied by anyone except by myself,
and that we must seek there for that Cradle Land of the ligyplians, " the Holy
Land of Punt," and not " somewhere on the shores of the Indian Ocean."

A point of less importance, but of a good deal of interest, was also suggested to
him, that evidence as to the existence of a dwarf race in the district of Akka, a
country bounding to the south on the Sahara, had come to light.

As far back as i88.^, a copy of a paper on " Mount Atlas and its Traditions,"
read at Montreal in 1882, was sent to Professor Sayce, and he was urged to spenj
a winter in Morocco and to look into the archaeology of that country.

For the first time, then, in November last I took part in investigations as to
the dwarfs. As previous to that the enquiries were made by others and at a great
distance from me, I may state what others have learned and know as to these
dwarfs before giving an account of my enquiries and their results.

We have seen what was gleaned by Sir J. Drummond Hay's cnciuiries and also
by those of Miss Day.

The late Mr. Aissa Farar, a colporteur, was visited at Beni Miskeen by a dwarf
not over four feet high, who wished To buy an Arabic copy of the Gospels, and
who, on being told the price, went away and returned with poultry, etc., equal in
value to the price named, and on receiving the book kissed it reverently and hid
it away in a fold of his dress. He was much more cordial and friendly than any
of the Moors had been, a circumstance that lends some color to the statements
often made as to these dwarfs, that some of them are Christians. The dwarf said
he came from a very wild and inaccessible country to the eastward, where his
tribe lived secluded from other people ; and he told a curious story as to the crea-
tion of a dwarf race, and why the Creator allowed them to be so small, and so
many other races so tall.

Mr. Farar was on a long excursion this summer in northern Morocco, and
was determined to find this little man, and get him to act as a guide to where his
tribesmen live. I have but little doubt that he obtained some further information
before he returned to Tangier. Arabic was his native language, so he had special
advantages for seeing much of the natives. It is to be regretted very much that a
fever (probably caught on his journey) proved fatal to him a few months :<go. It
is likely, however, that his family or friends may know what were the results of
his enquiries as to these dwarfs.

The fourth person who made enquiries as to whether there was really a race

44 The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

of dwarfs as alleged, was Miss Hcrdman, at that time residing in Fez in connec-
tion with the Mission to the Berbers. Her abilities and l<nowlcdKC of the Moors,
and of their language and customs, are spuken must iiiKhly "i by all who know
her. Unfortunately, I had, soon after writing to her, mentioned these dwarfs to a
retired leader of a troop of acrobats (2) called Sidi Hamed Ou Moussa, and sug-
gested to him that it would pay him to take a dwarf to England to be shown to
scientific societies, and exhibited to the public. He professed never to have heard
of such a race ; and on my laughing and saying that I would And the dwarf, as
there was one at Fez. he oflFcred to write to him, which I did not wish him to do,
as he would, no doubt, write forbidding the dwarf to be seen by Europeans. I
wrote again to Miss Herdman, and told her she would probably not be able to
get a sight of the dwarf. My anticipations were realized. In a few days he was at
the point of death I

Her letter dated at Fez, February 4th, 1891, says:

" Tkfre is a tribe of dwarfs inhabiting a part of Sus, called Oulad Sidi Hamed
Ou Moussa, or Sidi tiamed ben Muussa. Some of them arc acrobats, and come
occasionally to For.. They are expected in the spring. As the court is at Morocco,
I think they are more likely, however, to go there, as there is more money going
there. There is s man living at Fez of the tribe. I know persons who know
him. Unfortunately he is too ill to leave his bed at present, I am told, and is likely
to die, having been nilitiR some time. They are about four feet high. Various
persons from Sus have described them to me, and say that a woman is the size of an
ordinary little girl, and a man with a beard is like a little boy. They are never
I called Akkas or any name but that which I have mentioned. Some are larger

than others.. Write to Morocco City, as they will be almost certain to be there for
the festivities of the wedding of the Emperor's son.

" You may rely on the information I have given you, as I have it from various
sources. There are no dwarfs between Fez and Morocco, as far as I know."

"Our man-servant, a well-read Moor, did his best to bring correct news. The
dwarfs arc said to be ratlicr expert thieves, for they climb on each other's shoul-
ders, and so scale high walls. Others say that they can climb like cats without any
foothold."

It will be seen that everybody that so far has described them, agrees with Miss
Herdman in her account of the height of these dwarfs, who, with their distant
kinsmen of Equatorial Akka, are the smallest race in the world.

Mr. Walter B. Harris, the well-known tiaveller in Morocco, and author of
"The Land of an African Sultan," whom I met for a few minutes at Tangier in

(s) The dwarts often perform with these acrobats, but avoid the coast towns, where Europeans are.
Tliey hare probably the same relationship with the Sidi Hamed Ou Moussa that the liule Harateen have with
tlie larger Harateen. Many outsiders are allowed to join the troupes for a time.

The Dwarfs ok Mount Atlas. 45

November last, told me that he had seen a dwarf at Fez about (our feet high,
and he promised to make enquiries as to this race, and to get .1 photoi^raph, if
possible, of one of tiiem.

In September, 1891, he wrote to tnc:

" I am intensely interested in the dwarf <|Ucst1on, and intend leavinK (or Morocco
in November, when I shall make every possible cncjuiry about the subject, and I
hope to meet with success. Of the existence o( dwar( tribes I have absolutely no
doubt. While in the interior I made the acquaintance o( a leadinR Moor, who told
me that such dwar( tribes existed, and that he was yearly visited by three or (our
dwarfs on business."

The following extracts from a letter from him in The Times of September 14,
1891, are in accord with the preceding accounts of these dwarfs:

" Mr. R. G. Haliburton, in an interesting paper read before the Congress of
Orientalists and reported in The Times of Tiuirsday, September 3, gives an ac-
count of the dwarf tribes of southern Morocco and Mount Atlas.

" I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Haliburton in Morocco in November last,
and of conversing with him on this subject. I left Tangier the day after this con-
versation, and, excepting for a short visit, did not find myself again in that port
until ten months later, at the end of August, when I left for England, arriving ten
days ago. This fact alone prevented me couiniunicating my notes to Mr. Hali-
burton on the subject before his paper was read, and, as I feel sure that the ex-
istence of these hitherto almost unknown dwarfs will not fail to interest the public,
I take the liberty of writing to your paper as the best means of adding a few ad-
ditional facts to Mr. Haliburton's most interesting account.

" The first time I chanced upon one of these dwarfs was in the early months of
1887, in Fez, but except noticing him as a peculiarly, nay remarkably, small man,
it little struck me that he might belong to a tribe uniform in stature. This man,
by name 'Rebber, I afterwards became tolerably well acquainted with on several
subsequent visits to Fez, but in spite of my being on speaking terms with him I
found it difficult to persuade him to put aside his reserve and speak freely of his
people, and impossible to measure him. However, I estimated his height at about
four feet two inches. He is in, or past, middle life, the father of a family, and the
husband of a Moorish woman of normal size. The fact that his children are the
average height of the Arabs and Moors of Fez might lead one to suppose, did I
not know positively to the contrary, that this dwarf is only a stray case of under-
growth, and not coming of a dwarf people. He is sharp in wit, lithe in limb, and
most active, by no means unskilled with the single-sticks, and a capital rider. In
color he is a light dusky brown. He grows a short scrubby grey-black beard. Un-
til this year this much-petted and well-known dwarf of Fez was the only specimen

Thb DwARfs uf Mount Atlah.

I liad clianced ii|ion, but during this laM spring fortune put another in my way,
this time a younger man. As I was travelling in native costume, he seemed much
less reserved and suspicious than his (ellow-tribfsmen, and ci\tcred into conversa-
tion tolerably freely, tiiongh he again refused to be nieasiircd or to allow mc to
take his photograph or measurements of his sicull and limbs, flis tribe he stated
to be Mohanmiedans, living in caves and tents in a range of mountains situated
to the southeast of Wad Draa, but he did not know the name ' Bani' applied to
these mountains by Mr. Ilaliburton, nor did he describe the Akkari, (j) or in
habitants of Akkar, as being dwarfs, though a tribe of them is resident among
them. However, the evidence of Mr. Haliburton, and the strange coincidence of
Schwcinfurth's Akka of Central Africa lead me to discredit this statement, or
r.ithcr perhaps to believe that he was unaware that the name Akkari is used for
the dwarfs as well as for a larger people. He continued to say that his people are
keepers of goats and herds, and in tiuir own country do but little manual work,
though one and all have some knowledge of trade, such as tinkering and mending
old shoes, etc., which they practise should they migrate or travel from their native
lands. Arabic and Slileh arc alike spoken by them, but I could discover nothing
of a distinctive language. They are skilled, he said, in hunting ostriches, the fcith-
ers and eggs of which they sell to the Arab traders of the Sahara. Their country
can be reached either by Tafilet, or Tafilclt, as it is called by the Arabs and Ber-
bers, or by Tarudant, in the Soos Valley.

" Mr. Ilunot also mentions that the natives of the Atlas Mountains arc desirous
of discovering the ancient treasure-houses of the ' Ronii,' as they call their pre-
decessors in that part. At Inimintelleh, above Amzmiz, a small town situated to
the southwest of Morocco City and at the northern foot of the Atlas, I was con-
stantly (|ue.stioned about a treasure-house of the ' Christians,' said to exist at the
bottom of a curious deep pool, into which the water flowed by a subterranean
channel far beneath the surface. Of this spot I gave a short description at one of
the meetings of the Royal Geographical Society (' Proceedings,' January,
1889). An Akkari, or inhabitant of Akkar, I came across at Wazan, a
man by name Abdurrahman, who did not deny the existence of tha
dwarfs, as so many do either from ignorance or superstition, but denied
that the name Akkari applied to them, stating, as did the second dwarf
I interviewed, that they were large people, as he himself was, but
that many of the dwarfs were living amongst them, and that more till inhabited
the mountains to the southeast of Wad Draa. In questioning him as to ruins, etc.,
in the neighborhood, he mentioned to me the existence of a ruined and unin-
habited town, in good preservation, by name ' Osuru,' a name that will no doubt

(3) This name should be Akkoui.

The Dwarfs uf Mount Atlas. Af

interest Mr. Ilaliburton ns being connected with the worship of ' Diiloo Osiri.'
' Osuru' and ' Osiri" can be easily cxplainc<| to be one. owinR to the probablo
omission of the two latter vowels in the Arabic spcllinK. This Abdurrahman EI
Akkari is a man of medium height, light brown in color, of pleasing features ; he
is :i worker and mender of old shoes. He denied that the dwarfs arc ' worshipped
by the Moors,' and could in no ways explain the extraordinary reticence of Mo-
hammedans in speaking of them. That they arc supposed to bring good luck he
frankly acknowledged, and in taking advantage of this idea many earn a liveli-
hood by writing charms and telling fortunes. The reverence that is paid them I
believe to hv merely the remains of a superstition far older than Mohammedan times."
Mr. Harris questions the idea as to these fJarakcrs not being Moslems, but
the evidence on this point is very strong. He aI.so docs not agree with Miss Herd-
man and a good many witnesses as to there being a tribe of acrobats.

" The Daggata, or ' black Jews;' are not in reality Jews, but arc so classed by
the Arab traders and slave dealers, just as other black tribes are classed as ' Chris-
tians'; I have come across many of these Daggata, who are easily recognizable by
the three deep scars on their cheeks— a tribal mark. They are sai(! by the other
Soudan tribes to be cannibals, and are generally despised on this account, and on
account of the general belief in their being Jews. As far as I could discover in
conversation witli such of them as I have met in slavery, and who had lea'ned
Arabic, they are pagans, but adopt Mohammedanism very readily.

"Mr. Haliburton again calls attention to Hanno's Troglodytes. A large city
of these strange cave dwellings I visited at Ain Torsil, in the Atlas Mountains,
in 1887, and a somewhat full description written by myself was published in The
Times of September -'2nd of that year. I quite agree with Mr. Haliburton that
these caves were the work of the dwarfs, the low ceilings, seldom over live feet
two inches in height, alone going far to prove this theory.

" In another portion of his paper Mr. Haliburton mentions the ' Iiaik' bearing
the ' eye.' Does he not mean the Berber 's'lham' or ' bernous' of black woven
goat hair, with the ' eye' in red and slightly decorated ? The writer had one which
he bought off the back of a Berber in the Atlas Mountains, for they are not by
Any means confined to the dwarf tribes, but arc worn all through the Atlas Moun-
tains. The theory that this ' eye' is the origin of the ' Cyclopes' is by no means far-
fetched.

" It is to be hoped that if any reader possesses any knowledge of these dwarf
tribes he will take this opportunity of putting it before the world, for with a col-
lection of notes on the subject it would be far easier to follow up the study of
one of the most interesting and least known races of the globe."

We find on looking over the preceding accounts of this race of dwarfs, that

iIlI

48 The Dwarfs oi' Mount Atlas.

' 1:1

tlicy .igrce not only as to the main facts, but also as to details. Mr. Carlcton, of
Tangier, a nephew of the late Sir Wm. Kirby Green, tells nie that he has seen
three of these dv/arfs, and has often talked with them. There arc two dWarfs at
Fez, one of them not much over three feet high. He was in Tangier for some
months, and used to play chess with Mr. Carleton, who was then a boy. The
dwarf is called Abdallah-bcn-Saleh. He also saw the larger dwarf at Fez, and one
near Alcazar, the shepherd of the Kaid of Ramoosh, who told him that he came
from the district of Ouisda, in the country of the Beni Znassen, which cannot be
very far from the French frontier.

The two following letters were received after I had handed in my paper on
" Dwarfs and Dwarf Worship." The first, written at the Grosvenor Club, August
15th, is from Captain Rollc.ston, a well-known writer on Morocco, a country in
which he has resided for many years:

" Relative to your queries as to the dwarfs of Morocco, I saw one of them
about six years ago, when residing at Tangier. He appeared' to be about 35 to 40
years of age, between three feet and four feet high, and well i)roportioned. In color
he was no darker than an ordinary Spaniard, and, unlike the generality of the
Moors, was clean shaven."

The next is from Mr. George Hunot, our consul at Saffi, who has more than

once, in recent works on Morocco, been pronounced the highest living authority

on the Moors. His clerk, Mr. Harry Broome, a native of Mogador, had promised

I !Jj to get me a Shilhach version of an ancient poem on Karoun and the River Stoucha

(Charon and the Styx). Stoucha is the name of a tribe, an extensive district, and
also a river that flows into the ocean at Massa, and finds its way to Paradise, (i)
Karoun, however, like Noah or Osiris (called Isiri), is also a divine instructor.
God at his request gave him a plow, and he taught men agriculture, but wherever
he went a woman followed him and undid his good w .1,-. She may, perhaps, be
the original Pandora. Mr. Hunot also refers to son. 'istions which I wished
him to put to Dra people who attend the Saffi market, as to " an ancient city of
idolaters" called Punt, or Ta-Punt. Mr. Hunot wrote to me from Saffi, August
8th, 1891:

" With regard to the old song about Karoun and the Stoucha, I have been
at Broome to get the man to have it translated into Arabic. My man docs not
know the song, but his friend, a Soos Taleb, does. It will yet reach you. Broome
is trying to get it, and I will urge him to forward it as soon as it is ready, and
will assist also with the translation. I recollect the dwarf you allude to as living
and dying at Mogador, and I think there is one also here at Saffi. The Mogador
man was about the size of a boy of ten or eleven years of age. I do not think

(4) Rabbi Mardochee, when he reached the extensive district of Stmicha, entered a vast forest
called after a man of the name oC'Himmou Karroum." (See Bulletin ite Geog., x., 365.)

if'!!

The DwAKi's oi- Mount Atlas. 49

what you have found out is imaginary. I saw sonic Arab gypsies tlic other day-
fortune-tellers ; two or three of them were haiulsomc-lookiiig young women of
about 18 or iQ. They were from the tribe ol Oulad Bu Sebah (' Sons of the
Father of Lions '). I know from experience that there are hundreds of names of
places in the Atlas Mountains which we have never heard of. There are local
names (|uitc unknown to the natives living in the adjacent districts to those named.
1 hear from some of the natives that you must have got hold of valuable old
chronicles belonging to the races of Europeans or ' Romi,' that they know once
occupied their country. What they all want to know is where are the treasures and
springs of water hidden by those races, who are believed to have had the power
of the genii of that epoch ? I am sorry you could not have the song ready fo
your visit to CardilT. I should like to have Sir John's note, stating that important
results li.id followed your researches."

Mr. Broome speaks of having often seen an old dwarf at Mogador, who lived
there for many years, and was called Sidi Baraker. and, as a saint, was kissed on
the shoulder by tlie Moors in passing him in the street. This superstitious rever-
ence can hardly be wondered at when we remember Chdnier's account of the
Sultans horse which had gone with H.idjis to Mecca, and was therefore sacred,
the Sultan occasionally kissing the horse's tail and mane in the fervor of his
reverence I

Considering how few of these dwarfs are to be found in northern towns, it is
surprising to note that so many Ruropeans have seen them, and that they all con-
firm the statements of natives as to the peculiar look, size, complexion, etc., of
these dwarfs. I may mention, among those who have testified to the existence of
these dwarfs, the evidence of Caille (one of the few Europeans who ever travelled
with a caravan from Tinibuctoo to Dra, and reached that place alive), who en-
dured an amount of hardship and ill-treatment that broke his health, and ulti-
mately shortened his life.

Caille had never heard that a race of dwarfs southeast of Dra are slave-traders
and ostrich hunters, who are so much alike that they cannot be distinguished from
eacli other, and who go iiUo the Sahara to meet caravans on their w.iy from
Tinibuctoo, and to buy slaves ami ostrich feathers, which they sell again in the
markets of Sus. He noticed, as the caravan was approaching Akka, a dwarf who
met them at a stopping place, and was long engaged with the leader of the
caravan in business negotiations. The dwarf was left behind, but, to Caill^'s sur-
prise, reappeared at another stopping place, for Cailld supposed that the second
dwarf was the same as the first. He very naturally remarked, "ce petit homme
m'apparaisait comnne un nain mysterieux."

We have also the indirect testimony of Rohlfs, a renegade, who spoke Arabic

5°

The Dwarfs oh Mount Atlas.

imperfectly, and was robbed and left for dead by some of the lawless inhabitants
of the River Dra. He did not go down the Dra Valley, but crossed the river far
down on his way from Sus to Tahlelt, and must have been near a Baraker town,
as he speaks of a place of some importance, being not far distant, called Zaouia
Sidi Baraker (which he spells " Barca"). Although a renegade, he was looked on
with suspicion as being a Christian, and the natives, therefore, would not have
made the dwarfs a subject of conversation with him, for even among themselves
fhey say little about them.

CONFIRMATORY INVESTIGATIONS BY MYSELF IN MOROCCO,

1890-91.

Had I never made any enquiries myself, the testimony of so many natives and
Europeans, in so many different localities, all agreeing in their descriptions of this
race, would be very conclusive evidence of there being tribes of such dwarfs in the
southern districts of Morocco ; the coincidence, too, that the Akkas of the Albert
Nyanza are precisely similar to the little natives of Akka, south of Mount Atlas,
is so remarkable, that, coupled with the evidence which I have referred to, it
precludes the possibility of a mistake as to the existence of the Atlas dwarfs.

If. however, any doubt on the point exists, the confirmatory results of my
own recent investigations, begun in Tangier in November, 1890, and concluded at
Saffi in June, i8gi, will be sufficient, I think, to settle it. Having unsuccessfully
for two years tried to induce others to take up this subject, it was my duty to do
my best to clear up the two points at issue, first, as to the existence of these
dwarfs, and secondly, as to why so many Moors make such a mystery about them.

The results of my enquiries at Tangier during the first few days of my stay
there are described by me in a letter, which has already been published.

"As a good deal of interest has been excited by the subject of the existence of
a dwarf race within a few hundred miles of the Mediterranean, I may state for the
information of winter migrants to Tangier that they can see a dwarf at that place,
as he is always to be found near the gate of the large Soko. He is a donkey-man,
and is ibout four feet six inches in height, as tall as an Andaman Islander* OT
bushmaii, but six inches taller than an ordinary Atlas dwarf, and nearly a foot and
a half taller than Abdallah-ben-Saleh, the smaller of the two dwarfs that live at Fez.
His comparatively large size is the result of his father, an Akka dwarf, having

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas. 31

married a Moorish woman of ordinary size. Most of the followinK extracts from
the beginning of my journal in Morocco, November, 1890, refer to him.

" On arriving at Tangier, my first thought was to hunt up two natives, whf)
were there in 1887. They proved to be still there. One of them an Akkoui, a
native of Akkairi, in Akka, and the tithcr a Susi. VViien asked if they had ever
heard of a race of small men, they at once replied that they had often seen dwarfs
who inhabit Akka. The Akkoui said that a town of them was near Akkairi, and
that ' they are called Taata Tajakants. They find money for people. They live at
Akka-Igan, and are called Akka-Guil. Guil is the name of a place. They are about
four feet high.' The Susi said that he had often seen them when in the Dra Valley,
and that he had ' seen one that was not much over three feet in height.' They write
on a wooden slate in order to find money."

The following is an entry in my journal a week later :

" Having heard that there was a dwarf always about the Soko, I repeatedly
asked the Akkoui and the Susi to bring him to me, and offered to pay them well
for doing so ; but they evidently had some reason for not letting me sec him, as
they never brought him to me. While walking to-day through the Soko (the
market-place) with S. we saw the little man, who resembled an Akka. S. had
previously ofifered him a job, but the dwarf did not turn up. We, therefore, hired
his donkey, and he came with us to the International Hotel, and we induced him
to come with us into a room there, but he was evidently in a great fright. He was
very broad shouldered, and had a peculiar reddish complexion, good features and
long-shaped eyes, a little slanting up at the side like the Chinese eye. His expres-
sion was honest, intelligent, and good-humored. I got him to let me mark his
height on the wall, but he was in a tremor, evidently fearing the ' evil-eye.' He
would not remove his fez ; the edge of it was, therefore, included in taking his
height. I made it four feet eight inches, but S. said that the dwarf raised his
heels at least two inches. Therefore, allowing for the fez, we can
make his height about four feet six inches. His name is Jachin-ben-Mahommed.
He is thirty years of age, and a native of Wadnoon. His father is a native of Akka,
and one of the small race there, and is, he says, much smaller than he himself is.
Jachin is larger than any of his brothers or sisters. His mother is an ordinary
sized Moorish woman. The dwarfs, he says, are very brave and active, and great
hunters of ostriches, having small, swift horses that are called by a name meaning
' those that drink the wind,' and that are fed on dates and camels' milk, and are
very lean, and, if judged by their looks, would be set down as worthless. The
dwarfs, he says, are so active that one of them can jump over three camels standing
side by side. They wear a blue shirt embroidered on the breast and back, and iiave
leggings that come up nearly to the knee, and wear a haik with a large yellow eye

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

on its back. Their knife is different from those used by the Moors. They put
ground camels' tlesh into a bag when they travel. They weave cloth and make
spinning wheels and spindles, which they sell. They go into the Sahara to a fair,
and buy slaves and ostrich feathers, and bring them to the fair at Tazzawalt (a
town near the sea, about three days north of Wadnoon. where the tomb of Sidi
Hamed Ou Moussa is, and where the chief of the acrobats reigns as a king). They
are called Sahara people, and live about eight days to the east of Wadnoon.
They are about four feet high, and attend the fairs in Sus, and are different from the
Moors, negroes and mulattoes, as they have a peculiar reddish complexion. They
use firearms, and sometimes bows and poisoned arrows.

He said there is a man like himselT in Tangier, and he promised to bring him to
me. I doubt his doing so. as the Moors evidently have a dislike to having any-
thing known about these dwarfs. I subsequently told him I would give him a new
fez. but he never canne for it. It will be seen that he repeats almost verbatim the
account given me of the dwarfs by my Susi servant in 1888. (S.'s native language,
as well as that of the manager of the hotel, who was present, is Arabic). I used
often to try to get Jachin to come to see me. He shaves his face, which is always
taken as a sign that a man is not a true Moslem. The Ait Atta, who extend from
Akka to Tafilelt, and are found to the east of Demnat. are said to have been once
Christians. They shave their faces."

It is hard to imagine stronger evidence than that of a kinsman of the dwarfs,
whose native place was on the borders of the Sahara, and who described a tribe of
dwarf ostrich hunters. The criticism on it is very significant— a quibble ! I had
remarked that the description of the ostrich hunters was precisely like that that
had been previously given of them by my servant in Algeria in 1888. When I left
that country he remained there. The Times quite gratuitously assumes a series of
facts— that the Susi remained in my service; that I brought him with me to Tangier;
that he was present at the examination; that he sat at the elbow of the dwarf: and
that he suggested, and was allowed by us to suggest, unfounded statements to him;
and that, therefore, the evidence oF the dwarf was entitled to no weight ! The
animus of such criticism is so plain, that further comment on it is needless.

It will be noted that the ostrich hunters wear the khanif with " the all-seeing
eye" on the back, a peculiar kind of bournous that is worn from Glaoua, near
Morocco, to the Sahara, and from the Atlantic nearly to Tafilelt, by a majority of
the population.

A Moor whose father was connected with the Emperor's army during its raid
into Sus, says, " An Akka at Morocco lives on the funds of the Mosque of Sidi
Abbas. There are others living there. I know two dwarfs at Fez. One is called
Suldan El Baraka ('The Lord of Blessing'). I know two or three at Mequinez."

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas. ««

A native of Warzazat, in the Dra Valley, says that Taurirt in that district is a
place where tlie small people live. A tribe of small people live at Garnata, and arc
called from its name Egarnan. A Moor, a native of Tafilelt (several days to east-
ward of the last-named place), says. " The little people live near the River Dora, near
Tinzone in the Black Mountains, and trade with Tinzone. There are more than
a thousand there. They shave their faces and the front of their head; color red-
dish; lips something like those of a negro; but they are diflerent from other peo-
ple. They are about four feet."

It has come to light in the course of these investigations that the people of
the Dra are known as the Little Haratins, and also as the Larger Haratins. who are
the descendants of dwarfs, who have intermarried with black, or with white tribes.
The first have a reddish-black complexion, and the latter a yellowish tint. It may
be well to mention that Leo Africanus spells Dra " Dara." In Smith's " Dictionary
of Ancient Geography" we are told of the Darae or Gaetuli-Darae, on the
Steppes of the Great Atlas, and of " the Melano-Gaetuli. a race from a
mixture of the Gaetuli and the Nigritians. The pure Gaetulians were not an
Ethiopic (negro), but a Libyan race, and were probably of Asiatic origin. They
are supposed to have been the ancestors of the Berbers." The Haratin, according
to De Foucauid, are looked down upon and are anxious to marry among the
whites. When a man wishes to marry, the first question as to the lady is. with
the Arabs. " is she of an old family ?" with the Shilhach, " has she money ?" and
with a Haratin. " is she white ?"

The first Haratin whom I saw was evidently not an ordinary Moor, and looked
much more like an Englishman, and I asked him if he was not descended from an
European. He brought to me the son of the governor of a district of Akka near
Sus. of which Tazounin-Akka is the principal town, who said that " The Haratin are
the tall and the short, the latter are living in three towns, Tamzrat, Atouayli, and
Tadakoust; their faces are generally broad with a dark and yellowish complexion,
their old language is forgotten, and is called Tagnawot or Mizgitin. They are con-
stantly fighting with each other, and the governor has to make peace between
them." He subsequently said, that " The little men are the oldest people. The
Haratin who come from them are larger from intermarriages with other tribes.
They speak the same language and are alike in looks and ways. They and the
Zenegar also speak Hedah, Haidah or Tinker." He also said that Ait Wabili was
one of the towns of the dwarfs. " About 400 always there. They are called
Tajakant; another name is Aglimen. They make good dresses, and are fortune tell-
ers, and know the stars well."

The Haratin was subsequently examined and said, " The Ait Tinker, the Ait
Souk, and Ait Sheltar, are near me, and there are towns also of those names ^vhere

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

there are little people. We are called Haratin, Hartani, and Haidah or Heden.
The whole country above Punt used to be called Heden. The Bani Mountains are
called the mountains of the Christians, and are considered to belong to them. I
do not think a Christian would be molested if he could get there. The Ilaiden,
Haratin, or Tinker are different from the Zencgar, and know more than they do,
but resemble them. We have a habit of mixing up words, and putting the ends of
words first so that no one else can understand us."

A large Haratin (about five feet six inches in height), a native of Tamanart,
one of the headquarters of the dwarfs, was next examined. He said there were the
remains of ancient buildings there, and that the following were the names of their
towns in the Bani Mountains, a range bordering on the Sahara: Asa, Atoumribet,
Tashker-Yekn-ishet, and Bani-Youssi.

He refused to say anything when closely questioned as to the dwarfs. Asked
who the Tinker were, he said, " they are people who do not say all that they know."

When he first came into the room, he became very much excited when he was
shown the frontispiece to Vol. I of Brugsch Bey's " Egypt under the Pharaohs,"
copied from the monuments, and representing the Rutennu offering tribute, and
exclaimed, "this is what we see at Tamanart"; but he afterwards denied that he
had said this, and would say nothing more about the dwarfs and Tamanart. It has
since transpired that the most interesting remains that survive in the Dra Valley,
are at Tamanart, but what they consist of is not known to outsiders.

The next man that was examined was from the Sahara, a trader in dates, who
spoke only Arabic and Fellatah. He was a stranger in Tangier, and could not find
his way about the town. My servant, who spoke English and Arabic fluently,
brought him to me. He said he had been at Ta Punt (called by the Arabs Tabount).
There are a small modern town, and, two or three miles distant, the ruins of the
old town, where there are " little figures, some with horses' heads, some with
those of bulls. The people call them Ait Mahkerbu, and Ait Hazor.
Have heard them called Patiki. That is the name of the small people." After
describing a remarkable feast called " the Night of Confusion," he said, " the peo-
ple from the Sahara have nothing to do with the feast. They go there to sell dates.
The large Haratin are called Ait Brahim; the small. Ait Bar Hamed. The Haratin
are the big and the small."

At Saffi, a man who had just arrived in the market-place with dates was ex-
amined. He described the old ruins near the town of Ta Punt. "There are many
small figures there about eighteen inches or two feet high, but not of men. They
are mixed, part men and part animals, some with the body of a man, and the head
of a monkey or a dog. They are called Ait Mahkerbu. There are small and large
Haratin. The small are about four feet high."

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas. m

A rabbi from Ternata, below Mezgita, on the Dra, was examined, and said,
" The Ait Atta are half Christians. The little people are not Moslems. They keep
their feast by themselves. It is supposed they worship Didoo-Isiri, but they keep to
themselves. There are many of them near the Soudan. The Arabs fear them, and pay
to be allowed to pass through their country. Their horses can do without water
for four days, and are called ' dwiminagh' (they that drink the wind). They and
the little people are the same. The Arabs call them Baraker. They are also called
Ruhar."

Another Jew from Agadir was examined, and said, " They call a dwarf Taleb
el Elsir (' the little Taleb'). The Moors do not like to talk about them to strangers.
When tliey are in a town it is lucky. Some of the small people do not like the
Prophet Mohammed. There are small people at Ait Tinker, called by that name."

Hearing that there were Hadjis in town at Tangier, I sent the mother of my
servant (a Jewess from Mogador), to see if there was a dwarf among the Hadjis,
She met a Moor among them whom she had known at Mogador, who told her
that there were no dwarfs among them, for " most of the Barakers do not believe
in the prophet, for their ancestors were Christians, so they seldom go to Mecca.
They shave their faces like Christians."

Three men from the towns of Tazagora, Tatta, and Warzazat, said that at Ta
Punt " there are some small figures with the heads of wolves and dogs, etc. They
call them Beni Kerbu. Okillam is the name of the language of the Haratin." An-
other Draoui examined the day previously described these figures as " some were
mixed, part animals and part men, about eighteen inches to two feet in height."

A native of Ait Psech, in Akka, says: " There is a language called Tinker, which
is a mixture of Shilhach topsy turvy. The Haratin speak it, also the Zeneghar."
He said that at Ta Punt there are, in a ruined temple called " Abniat Didoo" (" the
Temple of Didoo") (i), "small figures inside the building, some eighteen inches,
some three feet, very odd looking, no one can understand them. They are called
Patiki; and so the little people are. The little men are very ugly, and have no
eyebrows, and have smooth faces. People are afraid of them."

I also tried to examine a native of Sakiat Hamra ("The Red River"), a large
black saint, probably a Haratin, who, as a diviner and fortune-teller, was all day
long kept busy in the Soko, telling people how to find stolen goods, etc., which
he professed to do by writing columns of figures on a wooden slate. When first
asked to come to my hotel, he said he did not care to have anything to do with

(i) This has been singularly coniirmed by ray meeting with the description by Scyiaz of a similar
temple south of Mount Atlas, with representations of animals and men on its altar, which was built by
Dicstalus (Didoo ?). There must, however, be many such ruins in that country, for Rabbi Mardocbee met near
Wadnoon with wonderful ancient remains, a high wall connecting two mountains and guarded by towers, old
temples, and stones inscribed with figures of men and animals. It is a pity his journal has not been published,
ISee BullttindeGeog. ,Deci.,iS75.)

i: !

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

^■*i

cither Christians or Jews; but he subsequently thought better of it, or rather of the
possible shilling, and came to see nie. At first he gave me information as to his
country very freely, until he was (lueslioned about " the Little People," when he
admitted reluctantly that there were some hundreds of them living near the Sakiat
Hamra, at four towns, named Toubold, Oulad Kador, Oulad Haboub, and Moul
Okaz; but when pressed to give further information as to them, he became very
angry, and said that to do so would be against his religion !

A Haratin saint of Zaouia Baraka, near Tamanart (the place mentioned by
Rohlfs), was examined. He had refused some months previously, as he still did, to
speak about the dwarfs. He seemed surprised at my knowing that there were
dwarfs where he lived, and said, " how do you come to know anything about
them ?" but he did not deny that they lived near Zaouia Sidi Baraker, and Tam-
anart.

A Beni Bacchar from near Massa, said, " louzia or Idyl is the name of the
small people (four feet high), who live in the mountains of Kaieez, in the countrv
of Akka. The small people worship Didoo Isiri, and they are the people who let
Didoo Isiri down and take him back with a rope."

Ali Ben Mohammed from Warzazat, said, " My tribe, the Haratin, is the oldest
people in the world, and all the gods came from there. There is a saying for
riches, ' you have all the gold of Punt.' The story is, that in the olden time, there
was a lot of gold and treasures, and it is all buried in Punt. The Mountain of the
Christians (Jebel el Nasara), is in the country of Akka; near the bottom of the
mountain is a town called Taskadeer. and near it there is another mountain called
Ben Touhad. It is said that Christians were living there once. To the soutlj of
the town of Imini the short people live, and were Christians in the olden times;
they live in the Valley of Imini, and are known by the name Imini." (He refused
to speak further about the dwarfs, or to answer any questions. He said he did
not know where the River Dra was 1).

A man belonging to the tribe of Sidi Hamcd Ou Moussa, which he had dis-
owned in consequence of some quarrel, was examined by Mr. Harry Broome, a
native of Morocco, and said, " the name of the dwarf that died at
Mogador nine or ten years ago was Had] Brahim Adousal, from the
town of TIata Wahaz, in the district of Ait Baha ou Dra. The
name of the other dwarf was Aderdour, from Tifshrar. Have seen many small
men at Wadnoon. Adousal is their name. Hazora also is the name of the small
people. You cannot tell one from the other. Some of the little people perform
with the Sidi Hamed Ou Moussa. One of them was sent to Saffi to reconcile me
to my tribe, but did not succeed."

A native of Ait Seribu, Beni Amral, an Ait Atta, said, " At Idautanan, not far

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas. 57

from Dra, there are people who put up a cross before them when they worship.
Tliey are whiter than tiie other people around them. The Ait Atta generally shave
the face, as the small people do too. Those who shave their faces are called !)>(
the others Christians. There are dwarfs at Ahdeed, in the Ait Messad, about 1,500
and about 1,000 at Ait Messal, also at Ait Bcnsid, but fewer, about 500. We, the
Ait Atta, do not reverence the small people very much, thouKh when we meet (me,
and do not know his name, we call him Sidi Baraker. Haratin is the name of men,
and Hartaniat of a woman."

Mohammed el Akoui, who belong-s to that part of the Ait Atta who live in
Akka, says his home is one day from Akairi, and that " there are villages of the
small people near my country."

A native belonging to the Oulad Willal of Tafilelt said that "the Madid
Sabaeen are neither Christians nor Mohammedans. The little men live near the
River Dora, near the town of Tinzoni, which they trade with. They have hair like
that of a negro. Their color is reddish, and they are called Touwata. Iguilmim
is another tribe of small men, near the sea, who are looked upon as saints. They
are neither Christians nor Mohammedans."

A native of Warzazat said, " Many of the tribes of the Sahara have no religion,
unless it be a worship of Didoo Isiri. The Zeneghar are not Moslems, but are
people who sacrifice sheep."

In the steamer in which I came to England from Morocco, among my fellow
passengers were two Jews who were natives of Mogadon There were also two
Moors on board, one a merchant now living in Manchester. One of the Jews, a
young man who has been living in Manchester for several years and speaks Eng-
lish fluently, said freely, without being questioned, that he had often seen the olcj
Baraker that died at Mogador eight or ten years ago. " Have often heard of these
dwarfs, and that they come from near Ot>hiran [spelled by Mardochee, Ofaran],
but the M jors would not talk about them. ' God has sent them to us. We must
not talk about them,' they have said to me, when I wished to find out something
about this race. The Moors worship the dwarfs, and are very superstitious about
them."

The other Jew, a wealthy oil merchant, said that he remembered the dwarf at
Mogador. " He was a great saint among the Moors." A Moor from Fez, a mer-
chant, who was on his way to Manchester to reside there, said he knew two
dwarfs at Fez very well, and that one of them was but little over three feet in
height. He would not admit that the dwarfs are looked on as saints by the Moors.

A few days ago I called on a gentleman in the city, who is well known in
connection with Morocco trade, and who said that he was a busy man, and had
not had time to read what had appeared in the papers as to the Atlas dwarfs, but

The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas.

he said he had a Moorish servant whom he would send to me. He, however, did
not do so, but subsequently explained his neglect by the fact that the Moor, when
questioned, had proved very unsatisfactory; for the man, who is a native of northern
Morocco, when asked by him if he had ever heard of a small sized people in
Morocco, said that there were tribes of them in the Atlas; but he added, "There is
a saying among us about them, that they have only one eye." (2) It therefore
seemed useless to him to have any more conversation with the Moor on the subject.

The gentleman in question remembered that there was a clerk, a native of
Mogador, in the oilice, and called him in, and asked him if he had ever heard of a
race of dwarfs in Morocco. The clerk replied that he had often seen, several years
ago, an old dwarf saint at Mogador, and had heard that there were tribes of such
people somewhere in the Atlas.

The following is the statement of a Moor made October ist, 1891, in presence
of H. W. Bates, Esq., Assistant Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society:

" I am 32 years of age ; about seventeen years, as a seaman, I visited Eng-
land. I married in England ; have been at Tazzawalt ; I went there when I was
g years of age for a short visit. Have been at Mogador about four years. There
are some small people in Haha, about four feet high ; reddish people, different
from others. They (the dwarfs) are Akka people, but it is not lucky to call them
by that name. There are thousands of them to the south. They call them Sidi
Baraker. The people like to have them in towns, as they are lucky and bring good
luck. Have seen them at Schedma, Terudant and Tazzawalt; have been forward
and backward, to and from Morocco. I often saw and spoke to an old Sidi Baraker
who died at Mogador ten years ago. People passing him often kissed his hand
or his shoulder. The Moor.s think it unlucky to talk about these Barakers, who
tell you how to find money, and know more about the stars than other men. The
Dra dwarfs are called Hartani or Haratin ; also Jed-jedi (' The Fathers of our
Fathers'); in Shilhach, 'Jed-ibwa.'"

When again examined by me he said, that " the outside people who perform
with the Sidi Hamed Ou Moussa do not belong to that tribe, who are acrobats
from father to son. There are dwarfs on the Dra. There must be many thousands
of these dwarfs altogether. One of the ostrich hunters U" \ often to come to Mog-
ador to sell ostrich feathers. He lived east of the Dra. Some of the dwarfs are
shoemakers and good smiths. They know more about the stars and hidden treas-
ures than other men."

(s) See Ur. W. B. Harris' letter. The Nubians apply the same myth to the Akkas of Equatorial
Alrks. (Sce"Heatt''ofAfrica,"n., 123)

SOME FURTHER NOTES ON THE EXISTENCE OF
DWARF TRlliES SOUTH OF MOUNT ATLAS."*

"With the precision of Herodotus before us . . . we must admit that the little race of men
seen by the Nasamonians exists to-day to the north of the Niger, but has not yet been discovered,
or that it has disappeared from those regions." — Quatrefages, Les Pygmdes, p. 25.

On the 2nd of September, 1891, a paper on " Dwarfs and Dwarf Worship,"
referring to some of the proofs that had come to liglit that there must be dwa'-f
tribes in southern Morocco, was read by myself at a meeting of the Ninth
Oriental Congress in London. In October following a pamphlet embodying the
paper read before the Congress, with statements of numerous informants (three
of them dwarfs) (2) as to the localities in which they reside, their probable num-
bers, etc., was published by Mr. David Nutt, bookseller, London, a some months
afterwards was specially reviewed in a paper by the President of the Khedivial
Geographical Society, Cairo, H. E. Abbate Pacha.

A new light was subsequently thrown on the subject of dwarfs by Sir George
Humphrey, Professor of Medicine in the University of Cambridge (sec " British
Medical Journal," Dec. 5, 1891). Dealing merely with European, i.e., non-racial
dwarfs, he divides them into two classes, " true dwarfs," who only differ from their
race in size, and " dwarfs from rickets," who are stunted, and generally malformed
and feeble. His statement that neither of these classes transmits its small size to
the children, disposes of the theory that the dwarfs met with in Morocco are merely
a few families of ordinary dwarfs. Far from being stunted and deformed through
rickets, they are very strong, extremely courageous, and wonderfully active, and
are, it is stated, feared by the other Moors. Nor can they be " true dwarfs," a class
so rarely met with that though for more than half a century medical and other
museums have been multiplied in France and England, those of the former coun-
try only possess one skeleton of a " true dwarf," while the only one to be seen in

(i) A French version of this paper was read before La SoeitU Kidiviale tie Giographit, Cairo, Egypt,
April 8, 1892.

(2) See "Dwarfs of Mount Atlas " (David Nutt, London), 1891, pp. 14, 18, 24.

59)

«f^

60 SoMB Further Nutes on thk Existence op

KnRland is that prcspntrd to the Medical Museum .M Cambridge by Sir George
Humphrey himself in December, i8»jo. Tiio liianccs of course of meetiiiK with a
"true dwarf" in a very sparsely pupulritfd coumry lil<c Morocco would be in-
linitely more remote than amotiK the many iiiiliions of inhabitants of l-'runcc and
Great Britain, if, then, a dozen dwarfs, not stunted or deformed by ricicets, have
found their way to northern Morocco, the inference is conclusive that they cannot
lie what Sir Cicorgc calls " true dwarfs," but must be racial, and connected with
some dwarf tribe.

But any doubt that iniKlit at first sight seem to exist on tliis point is settled
when i mention that the dwarfs seen in Morocco are not diminutive Moors, re-
sembliiiK their countrymen in everything except size, but are so strikingly distinct
from the otlier people of Morocco, that even if they were not dwarfs we should
have to set them down as belf)nging to a different and peculiar race. Among the
points which distinguish them from the Moors, Arabs, Berbers. Jews, Negroes, and
Mulattoes of Morocco, are the following : their wonderful agility; a rcddisli com-
plexion which is char.ictcristic of almost all dwarf races, and which one of my
informants describes as " like that of the Ued Indians of America," or according
to Schweinfurth in his account of the Akkas of the Albert Nyanza, " resembling
the color of sligiitly roasted coffee"; and the peculiar woolly hair growing in tufts
which generally distinguishes dwarf races and their offshoots. (3) Tiiey differ even
in dress, etc.. and shave their faces — an abomination to Moslem Moors. In all
these particulars as well as in size they arc precisely similar to the dwarfs of
Equatorial Africa.

Should we meet in Kurope with Mongolian-looking dwarfs, only about four
leet high, with a yellow complexion, flat, broad faces, high cheek bones, and
" pigtails," we should be disposed to suspect that a race of Chinese dwarfs must
have found their way West, and that these peculiarities could not possibly be the
result of ordinary European dwarfism.

So far at least as early ages are concerned, the idea is not a new one that
dwarfs once existed south of Mount Atlas ; for it has for some years been a sub-
ject of contention between French geographers and some French anthropologists.
The former maintain that the place described by Herodotus where the Nasanionian
explorers were captured by dwarf Troglodytes must have been an oasis in the
north-western part of the Sahara, not far to the south or south-east of Morocco.
French geographers, the highest, if not the only, authorities on the ancient and
modern geography of northern Africa, have for over half a century devoted much
' attention to the subject, and are therefore the best guides we can have as to the

(3) I made no note of, as I did not credit, the statements of several natives of Morocco, that the
bodies of the dwarfs are covered witii liair, a peculiarity whicli I have since found Is a characteristic of the
dwarfs both of Central Africa and of Keltic tradition.

DwARK Tribes South of Mount Atlas. bi

accuiils KJvcTi hy llirodotus of tlic mainly rcnion cxtcndiiiK wistwanlly frotii the
Nile to the Atlantic, and of the races that inhabited it. One of liis descriptions (4)
(.tart* front Thebes, and includ'S whit is now called the I.ihyan dcsiTl. the Sahara,
and the Sahel, the term "the l'ill;ir» of Hercules" heing uied for "the Atlantic,"
or rather for " the farthest west."

The country of the Nasamonians, called hy Procopius Zab.i, is now known as
the Oasis of Mzab. West of them were the Garaniantes, now known as the
Touarcgs, who, he says, foURht in four-horse charirjts with the swift-footc<l Ethio-
pian Troglodytes. The cave-dwellers must have iniiahitcd that rocky region, the
soutiiern flanks of the Atlas, which forms a harrier to the sands of the desert, and
many of the spurs of which jut far out into the Sahara, and arc sometimes called
" the Saharan Atlas." These cave-dwellers no doubt beionKe<l to the race of
swift-footed TroRlodytcs seen by Manno on the western coast of what is now called
Morocco. The numerous chambers cut in the face of inaccessible cliffs in Morocco,
and especially to the south of the Gnat Atlas, were i)robably made by these
Troglodytes.

Another description (5) which Herodotus gives us of that rcKioii begins at
Cyrenc, or rather at Mzab, and tells us of " the sandy ridge " lying to the south
of the wooded country inhabited by wild beasts, and extending westward to Cape
Solois, now known as Cape Cantin, on the west coast of Morocco. He, in fact,
describes the present Timbuctoo caravan route from Tripoli to Dra. According
to him, some young Nasamonian explorers went west for many days until they
reached as oasis, where they were captured by a dwarf race of Troglodytes, who
were all necromancers, and lived on a river which ran frf)m west to east. Three
large rivers, that rise near each other in Mount Atlas, nin tor a great distance in
a south-easterly direction, the Ghir, the Zis and the Dm. Though the exact
locality in i|uestion must remain a matter of conjecture, it must h ivc been situated
on one of these rivers, and must have been to the south or south-east of Morocco.
It will be seen in "The Dwarfs of "Mount Atlas" that several natives of that
country describe a race of dwarf o.strich-lmtiters living iti that part of the Sahara (.ft).
who are Marabouts, astrologers, magicians, and finders of hidden treasures, and
who own a very small breed of remarkably swift ponies, and arc called Tcata
Tajakants to distinguish them from the larger Tajakants living farther west, near
Tinzint.

The dwarfs mentioned by Aristotle cannot have lived in Equatorial Africa, as
they possessed a remarkably small breed of horses.

(4) B. IV., ch. 181, 170, 43, 44 ; B. II., ch. 31, and 3J.

(5) B. II., oh. 31.

(6) According to Herodotus, Sataspes, while sailing south from the Pillars of Hercules, saw a " nation
of little men."

Some Further Notes on the Existence oi'

The rock-cut chambers in the Atlas, whether intended for storehouses or for
residence or refuge, are so uniformly about live feet high tiiat tliey most probably
were made by dwarf Troglodytes.

yuatrcfages says {7) that " with the precision of Herodotus before us, and the
agreement which his narrative shows with material facts of a permanent nature,
we must admit that the little race of men seen by tiic Nasamonians exists to-day
to the north of the Niger, but has not yet been discovered, or that it has disap-
peared from those regions."

The views of French geographers on this point have been contested in an able
article on the " Pygmies of Anti(|uity " in iIk' last October number of The Kevue
flistorique on the ground that we can find no trace of there ever having been
dwarfs north of the Sahara. (8) By an odd coincidence a letter was received by
me in that very month from Mr. Thomas Martin, nowi living at Crowborough,
England, in which he said that, having become familiar with the pc.uliar klicks in
vogue in the speech of South African tribes, who 'lave iidierited or borrowed
them from the dwarf Bushmen, he was surprised in i^, ;t hearing at Mogador, a
port on the south-west coast of Morocco, some natives from Sus and the Sahara
using klicks similar to those of South African races. lie naturally came to the
conclusion that the Bushmen must have in early ages found their way as far north
as Mount Atlas.

The President, in the course of his paper on my pamphlet, drew attention to
the peculiar indentation in dwarf skulls at the base of the nose. If this is confined
to the skulls of African dwarfs, it would seem to indicate that it may possibly be
connected with South African klicks, either as a cause or as an eflect. (9) There
cannot be a doubt that there is an extensive district to the south of Morocco,
bounding southerly on the Sahara, which is called Akka, and is said to be the
headquarters of the Atlas dwarfs; and also that there is another Akka on the
shores of the Albert Nyanza, which is also inhabited by a dwarf race called Akka.
Which was the original Akka ? Quatrefagcs mentions a tradition among some
dwarfs of Equatorial Africa, that the ancestors of their race came from the north-
west, i.e., from the direction of Morocco !

(7) / ri Vygmt'es, p. 25,

(8) The learned writer of that article, M. Paul Monceaux, on the gth June, 1X92, wrote to Mr. David
MacRltchle as follows : " La brochure de votre anil, Mr. Haliburton, est line contribution trds ciuleiise et
trds neuve a la question des Py^ni^es. . . . Apr^s avoir pris connaissance des falts precis et des
temoignes dans " The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas " II me paralt difficile de cunteiter les conclusions de I'auteur ; et
je ne doute pas qu'un jour une nouvclle exploration methodique du Maroc ne vieniie les confirmer."

(9) A resident for some years In the Andaman Islands says the natives have neither this Indentation,
nor klicks In their speech; and that they shave their faces and heads with sharp-cdRcd shells. It Is worthy of
note that the names of their tribes are prefaced with a-ka. Why was the Sphinx (so venerably ancient a
monument that it seems to connect the present with the dawn of Creation— the era of the tiwarf god, Plah,
the Creator, and of the " first-created," half-animals, half-men) called "Akka " ? Some of my South Morocco
Informants say that in the Dra Valley the name Patalkl (^ fathers of our fathers, or ancestors) is applied both to
dwarfs and to little monstrous images, part animal, pan man. May not Akka, like " PataIki," have once been
applied to both ?

DwARi' Tribes South of Mount Atlas. 63

When Schwcinfurtli. aiul after him Miani, described tiie dwarfs of the Moiii-
butto country, and wore denounced as iinpostcrs, they had but Hlllc confirmatory
evidence which they could rely on. As respects tlie ([uestion of the Atlas dwarfs,
it is fortunate tliat sixty-five informants have testified to tlieir iiaving seen one or
more of thcni, tliirty-two (some of tliem dwarfs) Iiaving been able to describe
dwarf tribes and villages south of the Atlas. Before a year elapses further definite
information will, I iiopc, be obtained that will put an end to all question on this
point. I may, meanwhile, mention that a few weeks ago I received from the Right
Hon. Sir John H. Drummond Hay some notes in Shilliach (the Berber dialect,
spoken gcncrilly soi th of the Atlas), written by a Sus Taleb of Safti respecting
the localities in Sus and the Sahara where ancient ruins arc to be found. Of
several of them the Taleb says, " These arc places where the little people live.
Their occupation consists in making mats from Esparto grass."

RACIAL DWARFS IN THE ATLAS AND TIIE

PYRENEES.

Part 1.
(From The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, July, 1893.)

In my "Dwarfs of Mount Atlas" (David Nutt, October, 1891), a letter from
Mr. Walter B. Harris appeared, which stated that early in November he would visit
Morocco, and clear up the subject of Atlas dwarfs. Had he carried out his intention,
it is now plain that he would have put an end to all discussion on the (piestion
before the end of December, 1891; but when the time for his leaving for Morocco
had arrived, he was on his way as " special correspondent" to Yemen.

A year later members of the Scotch Mission to Southern Morocco discovered
that there were, beyond question, in the Great Atlas, and .ilmost in sight of that
city, tribes of dwarfs such as I had described ; and one of the Mission subseeiuontly
gave an account in The Times of Morocco of pygmies that had been seen, men and
women, bathing together in the sacred waters at the tomb of Mulai Ibrahim.

Mr. Harris, who accompanied Mr. Cuuninghan'c Graham on a round trip through
northern Morocco, heard from the Scotch Mission that there were dwarf tribes in

Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees.

the Atlas, a statement wliicli the Moors fully confirmed ; and he subsequently met
with fourteen of these dwarfs at Amzmiz, and other places, height 4 ft. to 4 ft, 6 in.,
with a reddish-brown complexion.

There is now no question raised by anyone as to the existence of dwarf tribes
in the Atlas ; but The Times of Morocco, in admitting the fact, tried to account
for it by a theory which no anthropologist will accept, namely, that these dwarfs
are stunted descendants of big rebel Berbers, who, driven by tax-collectors to inac-
cessible mountain ranges, had become dwarfed by cold and hard living. No instance
of mountaineers being dwarfed by cold into pygmies smaller than Andaman Isl-
anders is known to science ; and as the southern slopes of the Atlas and the se-
cluded country below oflfcrcd a safe home and refuge to these people, they must
have lived in the Atlas voluntarily. Mr. Silva, an engineer formerly in the employ
of the Moorish government, several years ago discovered in some high ranges of
the Great Atlas an independent and warlike race of Jews, who, so far from being
stunted, were much larger and more robust than other Barbary Jews.

While the fact of there being dwarf tribes in ..le Atlas wa« being conclusively
established, a similar discovery was made of the existence of precisely similar racial
dwarfs in the Pyrenees and other parts of Spain. Mr. Macpherson, our consul at
Barcelona at my re(|uest caused careful enquiries to be made in the eastern
Pyrenees, the results of which he stated were conclusive as to there being racial
dwarfs there, principally in the Val de Ribas, i metre to im. 17 c. in height, copper-
colored, with flat, broad noses and red hair, active and robust.

Some years ago a writer in Kosmos described them in similar terms, and spoke
of their hair as woolly, and their eyes as slightly Mongolian-looking.

An Austrian merchant has informed me that he saw in the market-place in
Salamanca similar dwarfs, " with maiiogany-colored hair."

My attention was attracted last winter by an old Murcian peasant-woman, who
had very decided " dwarf klicks," similar to those that are in use in South Africa
v.nd southern Morocco, and T suspected fliat she must have got the habit of " eating
words " from dwarf ancestors. On enquiry I found that I was right ; she said that
Jiesc klicks came to her from some " Nano" or dwarf ancestors. In four out
of six generations, a "nano" had appeared. Her daughter and grand-children
were under three feet eleven inches in height. In other half-breed Nano families
dwarfs sometimes appear that look in every respect like African dwarfs.

We find in the Palaeolithic and Neolithic ages traces of two dwarf races ; that
of the first era of an inferior type with a head projecting behind, and with oddly-
curved thigh-bones. The dwarf on the monuments described by Wilkinson is one
of them evidently, as he has a head projecting behind, in a singular way, and a flat
forehead, probably the result of artificial flattening, such as is seen among Amer-

Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees. 65

ican Indians. The Egyptian artist has also tried to give a full-face portrait showing
how the dwarf turned in his toes in walking.

The old Murcian half-breetl Nano woman says that there are also two species
of Nanos in Spain; one, a bad lot of a low type, who are Gitano-Nanos, and live
in caves, and who arc called Tartari, and walk in a ludicrous way, with toes turned
in. The other, who are fetter-looking, arc Castillano-Nanos, "who came to Spain
originally from an ancient city beyond Morocco, called Poun, where their business
WPS washing sand for gold and silver. Their queen was very fat and was called
Mena, and they were called Pouni, and Ou Mem (Mena's men)," names still ap-
plied to dwarfs in the Dra Valley. Berber women are often called Menu.

In Ta- Fount is the tomb of " the fat qu.en Hlema," or " Hlema-Mcna," where
ill times of drought offerings are still made. The ruins of the old city are called by
the people of southern Morocco Poun or Pount, or Ta-Pouitt.

Two Dafour dwarfs, whom I found in Cairo lately, and who had dwarf klicks in
their speech, spoke of Ta-Pount and of Hlema-Mena, both of which they connected
with the Dra Valley and Ta-Pount. One of the dwarfs would not come to see me
a second time, she was so horrified at my mentioning the awful name of Didoo
(" Didoo-Osiris ") ; " anyone who does that is sure to swell up and die, or to wake
up dumb, or blind I" (i)

RACIAL DWARFS IN THE ATLAS AND THE

PYRENEES.

Part II.

[From The Academy (London), August 5, 1893. J

A dwarf is a very little thing to get into a rage about. It was, therefore, some-
what of a surprise to me to learn from The Spectator, during the discussion on
my paper on " Dwarfs and Dwarf Worship" in September, 1891, that there were
persons in London who could not hear the subject of dwarfs mentioned without
flying into a rage. Also, in January last, referring to the substantial support which
recent discoveries in the Atlas had given to my views. The Spectator said that my

(i) A Beni-Bacohar, at Tangier, when asked If he knew the name of Duloo, exclaimed in surprise
" How is it possible that the gentleman ever heard of Didoo ? The name is old, old, very old." From that time
forth he Itept away from me. He was a magician and fortune-teller, and very superstitious.

Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees.

theory had been " met with an acrimony of dissent which could not have been
stronger if it had advocated unlimited dynamite."

Of this " acrimony of dissent" — which found vent in epithets not generally used
in such discussions, such as " Gulliver," " Munchausen," etc. — we are reminded, at
this late day by Mr. Stuart Glennie's letter to The Academy, with its significant
heading, " Mr. Haliburton's Dwarfs." In it he conveniently ignored the fact that
the question as to the existence of dwarf tribes in the Atlas had been practically
settled by the discovery of rebel pygmies in the mountains near Morocco City by
members of the Scotch Mission, an account of which appeared in The Morocco
Times of January 26, 1893, describing the little men and women that frequented the
sacred waters near the tomb of Mulai Ibrahim in the Atlas. Mr. Harris, who had
heard of«these dwarf tribes from the Mission enquired at Amzmiz — a town at the
foot of the Atlas, on the road to Mogador, and only two days from Morocco City,
and a place well known to him, and visited by scores of Europeans every year —
and was told by everyone, from the governor downwards, that there were such
dwarfs in that district who would not recognize the Sultan or pay taxes; and he
afterwards met fourteen of them, in all, who had a reddish complexion, and were
from four feet to four feet six inches in height. His letter describing them ap-
peared in The London Times of January 10. The only question now raised is as
to how they became so small. The highest living authority on such subjects,
Schweinfurth Pasha, whom I met in Egypt last spring, told me that he had no
doubt that they were ordinary African " racial" dwarfs.

The discussion as to them in 1891 probably arose from the fact (no doubt a
singular one) that the editor of The Morocco Times, who was then residing in
London, had never heard of such dwarfs, though he had lived at Tangier for six
years. His scepticism was confirmed by the statement made to him by a merchant,
who had resided in Morocco City for a quarter of a century, that he, too, had
never heard of these dwarfs. Yet this " old residenter" was, to his surprise, told
by members of the Scotch Mission that, on enquiry, they had learned that dwarf
tribes are to be found not far from the city. He afterwards mentioned the fact
to Mr. Harris. It is, of course, vefy singular that I was the first European that
had heard of these dwarfs; but no one but myself had ever asked about them, and
the natives never thought of volunteering, unasked, to give any information as to
them.

The lesson which this Amzmiz incident teaches us is that it is safer to trust to
enquiries on the spot, or to the statements of natives of the locality in question,
than to rely on the infallibility of competent authorities who have never specially
looked into the matter.

As respects the existence of racial dwarfs in the Val de Ribas, in the Province

Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees.

of Gerona, Spain, where Catalan is spoken, a minute description of them was pub-
lished in Kosmos for May, 1887. I wished to verify it, if possible; but I enquired
in Spain — not in France, as Mr. Glennie has done. There is no English consul in
France nearer to the Val de Ribas than the one at Bordeaux. I made enquiries
in Madrid among scientific bodies there, and wrote to Mr. MacPherson, H.B.M.
Consul at Barcelona, which is only a few hours by rail from the place in question.
I did not think of asking him if he knew anything about these dwarfs in the
Pyrenees, as I assumed that he had never heard or thought of them; but I asked
him to make careful enquiries as to their existence. After a month or two he
wrote to me that, after very careful enquiries, he was certain that there were such
racial dwarfs, especially in the CoUado de Tosas; and his full description of them
fully confirmed that which had appeared in Kosmos, and also agreed with the ac-
count of similar dwarfs, with " mahogany colored" woolly hair, which an Austrian
merchant, who had seen them in the market-place at Salamanca, had given me.
Mr. MacPherson said that he found that the dwarfs were often confounded with
cretins, but that he had fully satisfied himself that there were both cretins and
dwarfs in the district in question.

Mr. Stuart Glennie has supplemented his letter by one to Nature of July 27,
stating that he wrote to Mr. MacPherson, but received no reply. He probably
wrote to him in substance what he has written to The Academy, that he and his
French friends (none of whom probably have ever been in the Val de Ribas or
can speak Catalan) might, could, would, and should have heard of these dwarfs if
they really existed there. It is to be regretted that ignc.ance as to the existence
of these dwarfs on the part of his informants, and Mr. MacPherson's avoidance
of a correspondence with him, deterred him, while in the south of France, from
making the easy journey he speaks of. A few hours in the Collado de Tosas would
have been more useful than weeks spent with his French friends. We must hope
that he will bear in mind hereafter the lesson taught by the unexpected discovery
at Amzmiz ; and that he will also remember that neither cretinism nor any other
disease can turn ordinary Europeans into pygmies with broad, flat noses, a cop-
per-colored complexion, and mahogany colored wool, peculiarities which can only
be racial and the result of heredity.

When the argument, or rather retort, was used two years ago, " Why did you
not yourself visit the country of the dwarfs ?" I did not reply; but now that Mr.
Glennie has revived it, I may point to it as a sample of the style of argument
adopted by my critics. A year ago only I recovered my health, and partly my
strength; but for ten years previously I had been an invalid, who could not "rough
it" in any way, or stand the fatigue of long journeys even by rail. But under the
circumstances I did as much as Mr. Glennie, perhaps, would have done ; I offered

Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees.

iioo to an explorer if he would visit Fount in the Dra Valley, and I also offered
to pay his expenses if he would visit the Val de Ribas. I much regret that his en-
gagements prevented him from accepting my oflfers.

If Mr. Glennie can give us any new information on this subject, by all means
let him do so; but it is full time that his "acrimony of dissent," so unusurd in such
discussions, should be dropped.

RACIAL DWARFS IN THE ATLAS AND THE

PYRENEES.

Part III.

(From The Academy, August ig, 1893).

It is amusing to note the great anxiety which Mr. Stuart Glennie evinces to
destroy my credibility. For that purpose The Academy did not suffice as a medium
for adequately circulating his acrimonious criticism, and he has also utilised Na-
ture. As he no doubt has a profound respect for Mr. Budgett Meakin, who has been
my ablest and most persistent critic, I quote the following extracts from his paper,
The Morocco Times of January 26, 1893:

"An English resident, speaking Arabic, who has just come from the
foot of the Greater Atlas, gives us important and valuable information about the
stunted mountaineers who inhabit certain portions of that range hitherto unvisited
by Europeans. . . Messrs. W. B. Harris and Cunninghame Graham have also,
without reaching the hmits of our present informant, met with traces of the same
most interesting people [He then tries to account for their small size by a theory
new to science, that living up in the mountains had dwarfed big Berbers into
pygmies a good deal smaller than Andaman Islanders ! Mr. Cunninghame Graham
writes to me he believes they are racial; and, as I have stated, Schweinfurth Pasha
thinks they are merely ordinary African dwarfs]. They may yet prove to be con-
nected with Mr. Haliburton's little friends of the Dra Valley, some hundreds of
miles away on the other side of the Atlas chain.

" The traveller whose story we have to tell was within two hours of the holy
shrine of Mulai Ibrahim, the patron saint of southern Morocco, a shrine where
it is believed by the credulous Moors that many miracles are daily wrought on the
bodies of the sick and ailing. . . . Being in the neighborhood of this cele-

Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees.

brated saint's tomb, our friend naturally made enquiries from the natives around,
and requested them to guide him to the place. This he found them unwilling to
do, notwithstanding tempting offers, the Kaid of the district with his soldiers
being on the alert to prevent any further advance into the mountains. Checked
thus, he made other enquiries, and found the facts elicited harmonious, although
coming from widely different and independent sources. One of the facts most in-
teresting to him was that a number of small men and women were constantly to
be seen in and about the saint's tomb, which they visited from a distance of one,
two, or even more, days' journey from the other side of the mountains. When he
(luestioned the truth of this, many natives around him swore by Allah that they
had seen them with their very eyes. Our informant, on asking the reason why, if
there were such people, they were never to be seen on the plains, and why the rest
of the world was ignorant of their existence, was promptly told that a fine of $100
was imposed upon every unfortunate dwarf who was caught out of his recognised
district. . . . This naturally aroused his curiosity to a high pitch; and upon his
servant — a trustworthy and intelligent Moor, who speaks English and is well known
to us personally — volunteering to go and spy out the land in company with one of
the Kaid's servants, arrangements were made that the two should start early next
morning. It was about noon next day when these two spies returned. They
brought with them some of the sacred dust from the tomb of Mulai Ibrahim, and
also the following wonderful story:

" They reached the tomb after crossing the line of mountains just above their
employer's camp, and a level plateau on the other side, situated about half-way up
the grand and majestic mountain at the back . . . They had also seen there
little men dressed in ordinary mountaineer garb, with women small and pretty,
handsomely dressed and decked out with jewelry and other ornaments. These they
afterwards saw bathing together promiscuously in the sacred stream o la nature.
They brought back with them a string with a knot tied in it, by which they had
taken the height of one of these interesting little men, which, on being measured,
proved to be about four feet six inches in length. The height and build of the
women were declared to be proportionately smaller and lighter."

Mr. Meakin kindly sent the Moor to me, and I found the interview an inter-
esting one.

Mr. Harris, in December last, met at Amzmiz with a very remarkable and ex-
ceptional instance of little rebel tribesmen, whose ancestors had probably inhabited
that district before the arrival of the Arabs, and had been for more than a thou-
sand years in contact with Islam. Most probably a majority of them are Moslems.
Some of them wore beards as Moorish Moslems do. Mr. Harris, who found them
hated and dreaded by the Moors, came to the conclusion that he had before him a

70 Racial Dwarfs in the Atlas and the Pyrenees.

type of the rest of the dwarf tribes in Morocco, though nearly all of the latter live
in very isolated and secluded localities, where they are safe from Moslem in-
fluences. In 1890-91 a large mass of evidence was given by natives of southern
Morocco, that these dwarfs generally are not Moslems, and do not go to Mecca;
but that they worship Didoo Isiri, a statement incidentally confirmed last spring by
my finding at Cairo two Darfur dwarfs, who seemed to be horrified at my men-
tioning the awful name of Didoo, just as the Irish and Welsh and some Spanish
peasants shudder when they hear anyone pronounce the name " fairy."

Mr. Harris, in a letter to The London Times of September 14, 1891, said of a
native of Akka, " He could not in any way explain the extraordinary reticence of
the Moors in speaking of them" (the dwarfs).

In his letter of January 10, 1893, speaking of the mass of statements of natives
on these points (which in no way aflfectcd the main question at issue, as to the
existence of tribes of dwarfs in the Atlas), Mr. Harris says: "Although perhaps
our visit to the Atlas may tend to prove the existence of small people, it will cer-
tainly have a damping effect on the many romances woven up with their existence."
I felt on reading this that, if it should meet the eyes of my critics, they would not
hesitate to apply the word "romances" to my statements; but Mr. Harris pro-
tested against such an idea, and assured me that he did not think of me when he
wrote the sentence.

Mr. Harris's closing remarks clearly show what he thinks of my labors and
myself, and Mr. Stuart Glennie therefore takes care not to quote them.

" Having now clearly shown that tribes of abnormally small stature inhabit the
upper peaks of the Atlas, there yet remains to be proved the question of the
pygmies of Wad Dra, and many most interesting subjects pertaining to their ex-
istence. The fact that Mr. Haliburton's statement of the existence of a small race
in the Atlas Mountains met at the time with much denial and a considerable amount
of scoffing, and has noiv been shown to be true, renders it not improbable that in
time the rest of his researches into the questions of southern Morocco may equally
be confirmed."

SURVIVALS OF DWARF RACES IN THE NEW^

WORLD.

[From Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Vol. XLIII., 1894.]

In 1888, only a few months after my hearing of the Atlas dwarfs, I was told
by the governor of St. Helena of a Chinese-looking little race that invaded Britisli
Honduras in 1882. I subsequently tried in vain to get some further information as
to them, until I asked a Guatemalan general, with whom I crossed the Atlantic,
if he knew anything about them. He informed me that he had commanded an ex-
pedition against them; that they were Pagans, and very savage, and would neither
give nor accept quarter; and that Tn consequence of the danger of keeping them
prisoners, they were always shot when captured by his men, that they were from four
feet to four feet six inches in height, had human sacrifices, and used poisoned ar-
rows, and blow-pipes. A point of special interest relating to them deserves men-
tion: There seems everywhere to be an hereditary aptitude for plaiting, or weaving
mats, etc., in dwarf races, such as the Andaman Islanders of the Indian Ocean, the
dwarfs of southern Morocco, and in some places the Nanos of Spain, whose occu-
pation is " making mats of Esparto grass." The best " Panama hats," of world-
wide fame, are not made at Panama, but on the River Garrion, on the frontier of
British Honduras, by dwarfs.

A dwarf tribe in southern Morocco is called Ait Gerouan. In 1882, in a paper
read before the A. A. A. S. by myself, on " Mount Atlas and its Traditions," I
mentioned that the story of Hercules stealing the flocks of Geryon came from
southern Morocco. It is interesting to note that the Egyptians and the Greeks
often represented Hercules as a dwarf, and that the Spanish Nanos principally re-
side in the province of Gerona, and not far from the district and the head waters
of the Garonne. The scene of this myth is supposed by some ancient writers to
have been in the eastern Pyrenees.

After my Guatemalan informant reached Europe I endeavored in vain' to get
further information from him. Last year, however, on making enquiries as to these
dwarfs at the Colonial office, I was told of a gentleman, named Mr. Blancaneaux,
who had lived among them, and who afterwards wrote me a long letter giving me
much information, but, unfortunately, when I wished to get further details, I found

he had returned to his home in the interior of British Honduras.

(71)

72 Survivals oi' Dwarf Races in the New World.

He said that lie had heard of the expedition of my Guatemalan informant, but
that he bchevcd that tlie origin of the trouble had been in promising the savages
too much, and performing too little. Me gave them a very high character, and
said that there need be no difficulty with them so long as they arc justly and truth-
fully dealt with. He described the height of the Mayagan as " for the most part
five feet and under," but he did not specify the exact height of the Laconton. though
he spoke of them as " of the same stamp."

As my Guatemalan informant described the Laconton as from four feet to
four feet six, and Sir William Flower says that a race that does not exceed five feet
three inches in height may be classed as a dwarf race, and as apparently none <jf
these people are larger than the Andaman Islanders or the Bushmen, there can be
no question that they arc true dwarfs.

The Mayagan, so called from their having come from the Maya country, Yuca-
tan, cultivate the soil and use firearms, but the warlike Laconton, of whom the
Guatemalan general spoke, use only poisoned arrows and blow-pipes. They are
also called Masewal. (A dwarf tribe of the Kalahari Desert, South Africa, is also
called Masawar). They are redder in complexion than the Mayagan. Mr. Blan-
caneaux says that all the tribes that he has seen are more or less mixed with the
blood of the Laconton, who are of the same stamp as the Mayagan. They live
near the dividing line between Guatemala, Yucatan, and British Honduras. Like
other dwarf races, they have a prominent abdomen, and have eyes resembling those
of the Chinese, a peculiarity whicfi is observable in very many dwarf races. They
have, too, a knowledge of plants, and of the healing art, which also is a part of
the traditionary lore of pygmy races. The incantations and dances of the
Cinghalese Veddahs (called " Devil dancers") are almost precisely the same as those
practised by South African dwarfs.

Are M. de Charnay's " Lacondon" of Yucatan, whom he describes as of
medium height, the same as the Laconton of British Honduras ? The description
of them by the Guatemalan general has been indirectly confirmed, in more than
one particular, by the account given by Mrs. Le Plongeon, in her " Up and Down
Yucatan," of the capture by woo<lcuttcrs, " near the frontier of British Honduras,''
of a very small dwarf woman, (oddly enough) described by them as " wearing a
large hat." In the hope of getting a sight of her tribesmen, the woodcutters sent
her back to them with presents, (i)

" The buildings on the eastern coast, and on the Islands of Mujeres and Coz-

'.') Instead or spending my winter, as usual, in Egypt, I am intending to go to Belize ; and I wrote to the
GoTcnior in August, inquiring as to tlie precise heigtit of the Laconton, and as to whether Mr. Blancansauz is
in tbe colony, and what are the best time and route for visiting Belize. A letter to Mr. Blancaneaux was also
enclosed. Unless a reply is received before the end of October, my proposed visit must be given up. Tbe
Secretary of State for tbe Colonies has been good enough to give me an Introduction to tbe Governor, Sir
AftliiiT Holony. Since the above was written I have in vain tried to get some further information as to these
people, aUliougfa they are British subjects, within the limits of the Colony of Honduras

-<>>.

iiiii

.*»)KViAf .- iKVAkt K^■,^ If I.I NhW \\yn:it:

■ I I.J ^n \ ..7. I ■ r .., I, ,t«i: ilitil. f>\ ■. I.I.- .
illl. Il- tlulll '• « ' •■ .1 Sli|itn»l>

I 111- llliiiimi' 'I \ii« I" <i. 1 J» ^
• I ' •»i'if; I'-'i'' ' ' ' • '''1 I 111 ^> 'nI .1 |Mii )>i . •

kni.A'i i> "till' . itv ■' ill p)(>'iiiji

Mr A. 1 1 ' . jfi \!'..U, vr. ii! ■ !• 'hi..n;i i»4i..
'ft'- .ii.'(l;i ti' N A 1 t|iii>'Ii>i<), '-iHii'* I'lU,,
.1 liiiii'ii i)»v-:>r"' "I'' ii'ciuim!'""! iri('{ 1' ■
;ti,'ill ■>. :x 1 iit!il X, If 'MriMiiii' ' . ii II

. lt.|ltl^ I'.llf tl'V ■I...U'l !l i'tt>f'r' '.vli.-
lio an If'i'i'iliil UM lit lUi'i.' . 'li ^l'•.
•I'l^- .irc iiii.i)it' I " ''! ■ Ki • • 'f 1. 1 -N '
'rll^f:•.■ "Ail (rir .' . ,1; „i n'l- i-'ni.t

■" !'' I;..ili illi ii •• ,11 I » ' - ■'<n . !-•• i.;i .jii. '
' > '■! ;u >-..,. 11 '• ,,,.!• •
■ liiKinir-lti'tt. ..i I- ., . 1,. i-'i . •

'•^11 SVM I- iiCl^riilll \..l; u I '

'. '.',1 V Wire " I'.l'.- tir •■[■■■ ■ !'.. *

' • • • • 1 .ilMiMlrf th III

."' ' " . • rtlii .lit Ui<- iiH'i I
' " • ' I'll, I ";\. \i 'I I

-■ . -I I I... '.mi' • !■ i|ii<r iS ii >\

;i • < 1 f'VlllH Ml' lIlC \llilfi.

1 > . ' - J illi t e<i,il» ' (roll

II I \ U ) N.l.>>,

■■ .1 ' ... . > h'lsi I "iliinit"'!

I . I : , • !'• I ,»'. .(.Ic

'..■-.. ..,, . .. 1 |., ih-'iv

• V tt'i ■ ; „ :i •",! .' > 'lUc

. " , 1' ill. " ).• ' .' i..i

. , ' . ' .\ m]i '1, 1* , • r

I O . I ;i.,i. f''

I t u'l ill .; II |i«i,

,' I < , :u .. ■ .. f I li.i ■

. ' ,1'. t .,1 : iJ. .,.• II . . . .il a:l

•t!i 'I'll ' ij. -' i( J''>;v;i» II.. "/'■..»•

I'l.ilt. .,' ■•: . .iv..,|l. 1 ' 1 . I. ...■ .|r--

I' i:>nii'it l< . . ;. , v;,i;ii, •■■■'"' : '=.• tiui'li'' n'. . ifnii^

n lii'Ml '" llli.^ 'l.i> Mi|.,i|.r ,, (. t\.. ,(..l,tri I ,,'. 1.' ' ■ I. .i..-; ■■.( I I :if;,i'i, •( - 'I' . 'lu'
• If', 'Aw .'i:u".'. '.p.'. . 1 1.1 V ,, .. ' i.,,ui , -1 1..; 1 1 111 . «, ,1' ! "tin lli.i.i ,.'

.:i' 1 lie I.',', ii.l ..iMf. '•! .' rl'c ' ■ tM ...i, 1 .iin. . r. i. i. '. '. I'l-' .';.uv)i'ii

-.11; I...'. I I't.ili, •...•• ^ .; . ' ,i.i , l^.iii l.tf-'. • II" '•;>» <•'.:' i »• .> K

. h'l.', ••vi;r, ^u . • 1-. 1.; . It. 11, 1.. .1 '■• > •.!),. ..Ill if u i;:>(il' 'IS III/

'L.(

^ i| !h''„ V'JUit; 10 I'it ' ,\i-t'm' • 1 I ii,..v'i .fv iiK'.' ' 'n.' Ncv« 'A'-rn!,

• vniv iilvtt'i;^ 111 .1 ti(-r,iu.iii • '-v.: t'l" • !•• ' ■ ' Ji. '. . .' 'I !..' view i.t

'. liU'il '.> imitiTiiil- If]-. 'i'Dt •■'... 1 .ji iju •■ , , ), .1 I, .1,1 In |(.,

. Mr:iliiiii'( < nitdllttftl liy (iir I'tiLiiiv 'I'.iisji,,
' liii* ni tllCsf I: M> r«J»lurk..M t;i.>' .! !> il.- '

i>f',..i(| iini! H:'» I Ik', pvci i'v M» ntr.ii im (Ii.
"•' pr'.'iijiiicnl tliiiti ihr '•"<•■' «ti'»!' if iii".<' '
!•■>< I'l'ifi'ijsor I'titiiajii. .1. Mf'tiiii^ »ri' a i)h>'« «, ■.
. 1. -ti>ric>, calls itfi <i.bi<v. A <iwii»l vv'.>rn;i»
i- viil! be niiticc<.! !';*« '<■>• .tfr.U.ir »i»tn .1. •
II iv.;,. ,'1 ,yiul>r>t of »aft.:> ats*! <i! healing. A...'
iiiiiil " 10 fiKftli wc>t('»ii A'.M<(j'z. I'./ryi»-l • -

'ir f;irc ifi •iijlviifc

11' I- '!!■ ''oi'UKlt'lV.',
> V il I ( .'» Vull>tl..'f III

• ..•« in .0 •• i>rel»'ii.|
" lau ' *ivu' Hi *«.« ili.ii

■J *•■

.-^,

Survivals of Dwarf Races in the New World. 73

umela give evidence of habitation by a diminutive race. ' Tradition among the In-
dians refers frequently to the Aluxob (pygmies), and they ascribe ail the monu-
ments to them.' " (See Proc. of American Antiq. Socy., Ap. 24th, 1874, p. 71.)

The " Illustrated American" (N.Y.), of Sept. 22, 1894, announces that that cm
terprising paper is about to send a party to explore those curious ruins on the Andes
known as " the city of the pygmies."

Mr. A. H. Gatchett, in his " Ethnographic Sketch of the Klamath People" (con-
tributions to N. A. Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Vol. II. p.i, xcix.) says:
" Miraculous dwarfs are mentioned under the name of ' Nahnias,' whose footprints,
as small as a child's, are sometimes seen on the snow-clad slopes of the Cascade
Mountains. But the dwarfish creatures who make them can only be seen by those
who are initiated into the mysteries of witchcraft, and who by such spirit-like
beings are inspired with a superior knowledge, especially in their treatment of
diseases." " Another dwarf genius, about four feet high, lived on Williams River.
The Klamath appear to know certain spirits of diminutive size, but the character-
istics of such are not distinct enough to permit identification with the fairies,
Erdmannchen, or Kabeiroi, of European mythology." These, however, I have
shown were originally dwarfs. The oldest and most venerable institutions of an-
tiquity were " the mysteries of the Cabiri," and the oldest God of Egypt, the Crea-
tor, Ptah, was a dwarf, and is called " the Revealer."

It cannot be a mere coincidence that at Uxmal, only a few hundred miles from
the region to this day inhabited by the dwarf Laconton, and Mayagan, we find that
one of the finest specimens of American architecture is called " the House of the
Dwarf." The legend connected with the building carries us back to the Egyptian
dwarf God Ptah, for in it we are told of a dwarf Deity, who was born of an egg.
Ptah, however, gives " the egg of creation" to Knum, who out of it fashions the
world.

All this points to the existence of a dwarf race in early ages in the New World,
who were objects of veneration, as was the case in the Old Wjrld. This view is
confirmed by numerous representations of dwarfs recently brought to light by the
explorations conducted by the Peabody Museum.

One of these is so remarkable that it is deserving of note. The face is square
.'ind broad and flat. The eyes arc Mongolian; the cheeks bulge out so that they arc
more prominent than the nose, which is broad and flat. It is a curious coincidence
that Professor Putnam, in sending me a photograph of this dwarf (a sculptuic in
linestonc;, calls its subject " a dwarf woman."

It will be noticed that the familiar sign of the T (Tau) cross is on the forehead.
It was a symbol of safety and of healing, and it is still the badge of " the medicine
man " in north-western America. Ezekiel uses the word " tau " when he says that

74 Survivals of Dwarf Races in the New World.

those will be saved from the destruction which he predicts who have the " tau " (in
f»ur version " sign ") niarl<cd on their foreheads. The early Dutch writers on the
Cape of Good Hope, describing a species of worship among the Hottentot Bushmen,
said that they retired into a cave and marl<ed each other on the forehead with the
sign of the cross. Among the Tarahuniari, " with a firebrand the medicine man
malces three crosses on the child's forehead, if it is a boy, and four if a girl." (See
Scribner's Magazine, September, 1894, p. 298.)

There can be but little doubt that before long dwarf tribes will also be found
to exist in South America. Two years ago I was informed by Mr. Cunninghanie
Graham, who had lived for years and travelled much in the Argentine provinces,
that it was believed there that there are dwarf tribes living on islands in a vast
lake in Uruguay at the head waters of the La Plata. I am reminded of this by the
statement of a friend, that about 1869 he saw an article in a magazine which de-
scribed that lake, and stated that occasionally portions of floating islands have
drifted down the La Plata, bringing sometimes wild animals with them, and on one
occasion a dwarf family.

The description given by a traveller at the World's Fair of a pygmy race of
hunters whom he had met to the south of Brazil, and the persistent rumors, that
have reached the archaeologists of the Peabody Museum of the existence of dwarf
tribes and dwarf buildings on the east side of the Andes, give some confirmation
to these stories.

Dwarf Klicks. — A few observations on the existence of klicks, and their
connection with dwarf races, may be of interest, as it is a subject which no one
has looked into except myself. Until my discovery of these klicks in southern
Morocco, and subsequently in Spain, it had been assumed that they were
peculiar to South Africa. They are simply defects of articulation, the sound
of which is so peculiar that it cannot properly be described in writing. One
of them, however, which is the most common, is somewhat simple. I first
heard it without suspecting what it was, when I endeavored to write down the
name of the tribe to which a native of the Dra Valley, south of the Atlas, be-
longed. I wrote it down " Psecht"; it ought to have been " Pecht." The klick
introduced a sound like " s" or "ts." I supposed that the odd spasmodic action of
the tongue, with which the sound was accompanied, was the effect of some nervous
affection of the throat or tongue.

Klicks in South Africa are sometimes called " Bushman klicks," for the Bush-
men and Hottentots have a large variety of them, a few of which have been in-
herited or borrowed from them by the Kaflirs. My revered friend, the late Dr.
MoflFat, the father-in-law of Livingstone, and a missionary in South Africa for half
a century, and one of the few Europeans who could pronounce them, often amused
me by repeating them to me.

Survivals of Dwarf Races in the New World.

A few years ago a friend who had lived in South Africa, and also at Mogadnr,
the most southerly place in Morocco accessible to Europeans, casually remarked
that he had often wondered how the Bushmen had in early times found their way
as far north as southern Morocco, the people of which he was convinced used
" Bushman Iclicks." My discovery of racial dwarfs, very similar to those of Soutii
Africa, in the vast region between the Great Atlas and the Sahara, solved the mys-
tery. I have since that found that these klicks are in general use there, and are
known as "eating words," but arc quite unknown north of the Atlas.

But unexpectedly the range of these klicks was found to extend as far north
as the Pyrenees.

While I was residing in a coast-town in Morocco, a Barbary Jewess from
Mogador, who understood Spanish, and the dialect of southern Morocco, told nic
that she had been surprised at finding an old Spanish woman who " ate her words
just like a Susi." I told her to find out where the old woman had got her klicks,
for though she was above the ordinary size, I suspected that she must have dwarf
blood in her veins. When asked the question by my informant, she said that she
had got them from her " Nano ancestors." Dwarfs are called in Spain Naiw or
Natiu, and sometimes (incorrectly) Enano. It turned out that she had the eyes and
face of a Chinaman, or a Tartar, and that her only child and her grandchildren
were Nanos, none of which much exceeded four feet in height, while several were
less than that. At that time one of her granddaughters, only three feet ten and a
half inches high, was playing with children at the door of my hotel, and looked
like a child of 8 years of age, though she was over 14, and therefore a woman, for
children at 12 or 13 years of age marry in that country. She died in May last, and
I was told that she had not grown any taller since I had seen her in 1891.

In Spain they have the same phrase that we find in Morocco for klicks — "eat-
ing words." That klicks are not caused by any physical defect is clear from the
fact that the old woman, who was brought up in the mountains of Murcia, has
these klicks, while her little daughter and grandchildren, who have been brought
up at a seaport, " 'aga, with ordinary Spanish children, have no trace of them.

The belief of the Klamath people in the existence of mysterious dwarfs in the
Cascade Range, and the occurrence of klicks in the language of a northwest tribe
described in the Smithsonian "Contributions to N. A. Ethnology," lead us to sus-
pect that this tribe has inherited dwarf blood, or has resided in the vicinity of a
dwarf klick-using people at some period of its existence.

Of course, if klicks only exist in North and South Africa and Spain, in the
Old World, and yet are found in a part of the New World in connection with a
dwarf race or its offshoots, it might point to an Eastern origin for the latter. But
that klicks are not known to exist elsewhere is not the slightest evidence that they

76 Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Races.

iDay not really exist, for nothing is more remarkable in the history of scientific in-
vestigation than the ignorance of even competent observers as to wayside truths
that have not been sought for by them, or brought to their notice. Now that at-
tention has been drawn to dwarf klicks, it is probable that they will be found in
many ancient dialects, and especially in the languages of the dwarfish tribes that
are found in northeastern Asia. (2)

Are klicks of dwarf origin, and entitled to be called "dwarf klicks"? But
for my having adopted this assumption, I should never have known that my
large-sized, Mongolian-looking Spanish informant was a half-breed Nana.

The name Nahnias for the legendary dwarfs of the Cascade Mountains is no
doubt a corruption of the Spanish Nano (fern. Nana).

DWARF SURVIVALS AND TRADITIONS AS TO

PYGMY RACES.

ITraosactions of American Association, 1897.]

When it became clear, in 1890, th.at the range of African dwarfs reached as far
north as the Great Atlas, I naturally inferred that in prehistoric times their range
extended even far to the north of the Straits of Gibraltar. That the Atlas dwarfs
had klicks in their speech, similar to those of the Bushmen, was subsequently
established, the people of southern Morocco, among whom they are in vogue,
calling them " eating words," a term applied in Spain to a peculiarity in the speech
of Andalusians.

Folk-lore has also preserved in northern Europe distinct traditions of an early
race of dwarfs, who were magicians and cunning artificers in the bronze and later
ages. " Balor of the Blows," the Vulcan of the Irish, " appeared at the forge as
a red-headed little boy." The Dactyls (the " Tom Thumbs" of Crete) worked .it
their magic forges in the caves of Mount Ida. Little dark-complexioned smiths
and magicians are still remembered in Scotch folk-lore as " the Brownies," and
the Welsh l)elievc in Merlin's band of dwarf smiths, who are still to
be heard busily at work making and mending armor and weapons. Taata, a

(2) This conjecture, since ttils paper was read, has been singularly contirnied. Dr. I'ranz Boaz tells me
he has noticed klicks in the speech of the Chlnooks and the Western Eskimos. Another informant has heard
them among the Mayas ; and a Hindoo says that he was greatly surprised at bearing the odd sound produced
by kllcki In the speech of a dvarf tribe in the Punjaub.— R. G. H.

Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Races. 77

Berber name for dwarfs, reminds us of those dwarf magicians, the Tuatha de
Danann.

It seemed most likely that there must be thousands of survivals in Kurope of
a small prehistoric race, and that there must be references to such survivals in
periodical literature, or the publications of scientific societies. A very laborious
search for days in the Parliamentary Library at Ottawa was rewarded in July, 189J,
by my finding in a back number of " Kosmos" (May, 1887) a paragraph of only
a few lines, entitled " The Pigmies of the Val de Ribas," mentioning a paper by
Professor Miguel Morayta on a dwarf community in the Val de Ribas, in the
province of Gerona, Spain. They were described as having red hair, Mongolian
eyes, broad, flat noses, wide, flat faces, and prominent lips; but the paragraph
neither stated where the paper had appeared, nor gave ♦he author's address. Un-
fortunately the editor of " Kosmos" was dead, and " Ko. nos" itself had come to
an end. Dr. Leitner did his best to assist me, and wrote, but without success, to
a scientific man at Barcelona. The British Minister in Spain also had an en(|uiry
made at Madrid, but no one knew of these dwarfs, or of the paper or its author.
Later on, I found a half-breed Spanish Nana woman who had decided klicks,
which she said she had inherited from Nano ancestors. She gave much interesting
information about the Nanos, many of whom resided in the mountains of Murcia.
Although a large woman herself, her daughter and her grandchildren were all
dwarfs — some of them not exceeding four feet in height.

Early in May, 1894, Mr. MacRitchie visited the Val de Ribas in order to verify
the statement of Mr. MacPherson, lately British Consul at Barcelona, that there
were racial dwarfs in the eastern Pyrenees; and simultaneously I received from Mr.
MacPherson a copy in Spanish of the long-.sought-for paper of Professor Morayta,
which, however, did not state whether it had been published or not. The gist of
the professor's paper, therefore, will be read with interest, (i)

These people (he says) live among a larger population of ordinary Catalans,
who have resided there from a remote time, and who regard the dwarfs as a dis-
tinct race, calling them " extranys" (foreigners), and also " fenomenus," and look i
down upon them as laughing-stocks. A good many of them, he says, suffer from
" paperas" (goitre), which is phenomenal in some, and is called " goll," and the
persons aflfected are called " Golluts."

A medical man who has attended such cases tells him that these golls can be
successfully treated by iodir.e.

The idea that arsenical waters cause the Nanos to become Cretins and dwarfs

(■) As much of this paper was written for piihlicatinn in an Knglish prricdical a year ago, some of my
quotations from Professor Morayla's paper are the same as those that appeared in my paper of i8<)4, " Survivals
of Dwarf Races in the New Worid."

78 Dwarf Sukvivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Racks.

is refuted by the fact, that their Catalan neighbours do not suffer thus. In early
youth Cretinism docs not appear, but on their reaching maturity the " golls"
begin to show themselves, increasing with years to the size of a small melon. " If
all these Nanos had ' golls,' I should infer that the ' goll' was the cause of their
low size and of their limited intellectual development." He thinks that those of
the Nanos who have poor and scanty food die out. He adds all this " shows that
the Nanus (2) are a peculiar race with all the characteristics of such." Some of
these people who live comfortably are intelligent enough to carry on business suc-
cessfully. " These and many other instances show that their stupidity is the result
of the way they live. ... It may turn out that the existence of this race at
Ribas may end in showing that in very remote ages there existed in Europe a
Tartar race, which hitherto has not been discovered."

Professor Morayta's paper shows that Cretinism is racial; but he does not ex-
plain very clearly the cause. That a dwarf Turanian population once existed
throughout .Asia and Europe we can hardly doubt, though survivals are only to
be found in the recesses of mountains. All over the world dwarfs are born
hunters, and therefore flesh-eaters. When their game is destroyed, or they arc
driven from their hunting grounds, they, no doubt, lose their wonderful strength
and agility, and gradually becoming moribund, go through the long process of
dying out, just as many plants have died out when the soil or the air no longer
supplied them with the necessary nutrition.

Those who suppose that Cretinism is the cause of dw.arfism and of the
peculiarities in looks, colour, etc., of the dwarfs of the Pyrenees and the Alps, are
mistaking the effect for the cause, and are " putting the cart before the horse."
In my paper on " Dwarf Survivals," read .it the Association last year, I suggested
that Cretinism was not a disease, but a symptom of decadence among a racial
dw . ' pulation. I have met with a singular confirmation of this view. Last
spring I visited some Acadian districts in Louisiana, and learned that in the old
French spoken there " Cretin" simply means a " stupid dwarf," and has no refer-
ence in any way to any disease.

The Denga dwarfs are the same now as they were five thousand years ago,
yet we do not hear of goitre among the robust and warlike pygmies of the Gre.it
Lakes and the Congo, who are flesh-eaters and hunters. I am persuaded thcit if a
child of a Pyrenean Cretin were to be fed on flesh food, and made to lead an
active life, he would never show any trace of goitre on arriving at manhood. May
not " Cretin" be a very ancient name for a dwarf ? The little Dactyls, as we have
seen, were Cretans.

(a) Tbit ending in u is probably Catalan. In Spanish a male dwarf it a Nana, and a female Nana. The
people call themselves A'anos, not Enanos.

Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Races,

The Nano is about four feet liiKh, and is well formed ; " liis foot is very small
and well shaped ; and so is his hand, but its palm is much developed, whence the
finders seem shorter and fatter than they really are. They are very broad-cheeked,
which makes them seem stronger than is actually the case. They look like small
men. In general they all walk Inclined forward." This peculiarity appears also in
the Ainos, and is ridiculed in the Japanese illustrations of Mr. Mac Ritchie's work.
Professor Huxley, in describing " Iberian man " of glacial eras, states that he must
have walked thus, a conjecture which, even if nothing more than a lucky guess, is
interesting.

Th« men and women have a well-shaped calf and leg. Their features are so
characteristic that to see one of them is to sec all. Their hair he describes as red,
"like that of a ^oasant who does not comb or take care of his hair." "They
have a round face th.it is as wide as it is long; the cheek bones are very promi-
nent, and the jaw bones strongly developed, which makes them look scpiare. To
this square look the nose contributes. It is flat and even with the face, which
makes it look like a small ball, and the nostrils are rather high up. The eyes are
not horizontal, the inside being lower than the outside, and they look like the
Chinese, or rather like the Tartar race."

I lent Mr. MacRitchie a photograph which I li.id had taken of a half-breed
Murcian Nana, with her granddaughter. The people of the coast town in Morocco,
where she now lives, all noticed her Chinese look. Mr. MacRitchie has ju.st
returned the photograph, and writes that a person not interested in dwarfs in any
way remarked, on looking at it, that he would take it for ;i likeness of a Chinese
woman.

Professor Morayta says that the Nanos have only half a dozen straggling
hairs on their face, which is discoloured and flaccid to such an extent that it seems
to have no nerves. Hence, even when they arc very young, they have many
wrinkles. " In short, they have the face of ;in old woman. If the Nanos alf
dressed alike it would be difficult to tell the men from the women. Their odd
look is increased by their large mouth, which does not cover their long and strong
teeth. Their incisors are remarkably long ;in(l strong, and their lips are always
wet with saliva, as if from water-brash. The brutalized life they lead may explain
their being so ignorant that many of them do not remember the name of their
father or of the place where they live."

In 1894 a dwarf about four feet high, a native of Darftir, who has for years
been living in Cairo, was brought to me. He resembled, in many respects, the
dwarfs of the Pyrenees. He had the same large teeth, open lips, and excessive
saliva, but his walk was a roll from side to side. I did not notice his bending for-
ward. His walk was precisely like that of " Gitano-Nanos," which the old Murcian

Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to I'vomy Races.

• H:H>

woman described and imitated. His colour was a reddish brown. At the Hotel
Metro|)ole, Cairo, there was anotlier, but somewhat difTcrent dwarf, from the upper
Nile region, who was quite black, and had thici<cr lips. I did not notice anything
peculiar in his walk. The natives of the Atlas say that there are black dwarfs there
who are larger than the other dwarfs. Zebehr Fasha told me in i8<;j that the
dwarfs of the upper Nile region arc called " Dcnga," and arc greatly superior to
their larger neighbours in intelligence. On the monuments two " Dcnga" or
" Deng" dwarfs arc described as having been brought to Egypt, who " danced
divinely," and were more prized by the Pharaohs than the products of Fount.
One is described as from the Holy Land of Fount, and the other from " the Land
of the Blessed Spirits," probably another name for Fount. Maspero, in his Origin
of Civilization (1894), calls these dwarfs " Danka," but the Report of the
Egyptian Exploration Fund, October, 1894, calls them " Denka," or "Denk." One
of the names of the dwarfs of the Atlas is Ait Tinker, or Dinka.

Mr. MacFherson, late British Consul at Barcelona, who kindly made enquiries
into the statements of Frofessor Morayta, fully confirmed them. He said that
smallpox carried oflf hundreds of these Nanos a few years ago, and that they are
rapidly dying out. and he thinks that more of them are to be found at the Col
de Tosas than anywhere else. He was satisfied that there are many Nanos who
are Cretins, and many who are not. Mr. Mac Ritchie spent a few days in that
country, but the weather and the roads were very bad, and prevented his remain-
ing there longer. There is also a village called Aledo on the summit of a high
mountain between Carthagena and Granada, " inhabited by small people," which
I wished him to visit, but he was unable to do so. Many weeks, or rather
months, would be re(|uired to explore thoroughly the regions where it is said the
Nanos are to be found. The British Vice-Consul at Carthagena intended to visit
Aledo in 18Q3, but I have no tidings yet of his having made the excursion. We
must hope that he will yet visit that place. Mr. Mac Ritchie has published an in-
teresting paper on these Fyrenean dwarfs, in the " Internationales Archiv, fiir
Ethnographic," Lcyden, in which some kodak photos of them have been given
by him.

Since my paper on " Survivals of Dwarf Races in the New World" was read
at the meeting of this Association at Brooklyn, many things have come to light
fully confirming my conclusions. In " The Academy" (London), January 12, 1895,
Mr. M.1C Ritchie says, "Captain Foxc, in i86i, discovered an island cemetery in
the northwest corner of Hudson Bay, in which the longest corpses were not over
four feet long. Whereupon Foxe says, ' They seem to be a people of small stature.
God send me better for my adventure.' " He has also drawn my attention to a
list of the Indian tribes of the Valley of the Amazon, by Clement R. Markham,

DwARi' Survivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Kaces. 8i

rccfiitly piihlislicd l>y the Aiitliropological Institute of Great Britain ami Irelaii<l,
wliicli ineiitions two dwarf tribes there, tlic Guayazis and the Catianas, citing as
his authorities Acuna, Castehiau, Spix and Martius, and others. But for the most
important confirmation we are indebted to the ul)i(|uitous press correspondent.
WritiuK from the City of Mcxiio to Tlie ChicaRo Tribune, October 15, i8(>4, its
correspondent, describiuK the various races to be seen in the streets of the city,
inchides " Indians from the liills, and (|uccr little dwarfish savages, clad in two
coarse woollen garments, who have tiicir Uottentot-iike lia!)itations within the
gates of the city, living in their huts of adobe, in settlements often found behind
respectable blocks of houses, . . . those strange dwarf people, who glide in
and out of the crowd like gnomes."

A casual authority of this sort, who only describes what he sees, and does not
trouble himself about scientific theories, is really more conclusive than the obser-
vations of a specialist, however candid he may be as to his favourite study. The
testimony of this correspondent has been borne out by Mr. Robert Clarke, the
Cincinnati publisher, who informs me that he also has seen these dwarfs. Mr. H.
V. Wills, of Boston, Mass., tells me that his attention was attracted at a repre-
sentation of a Passion Play near the City of Mexico, by soinc very small Indians,
whom he " at first took to be overgrown children. They looked more like S(iuaws
than men, and their faces were broad, flat, puffy and wrinkled."

This is the description that M. Charnay gives of the Lacondon, on the frontier
of British Honduras. He does not describe their height, but says that he could
not tell the men from the women, and that they had broad, flaccid, puffy faces —
almost the very same words as those used by Professor Morayta as to the Nanos
of the Pyrenees. Mr. A. Glaspell, an American who has had business engagements
in Mexico, says that on the 12th of December, the fiesta of our Lady of Guada-
loupe (the old feast of " the Mother of the Gods"), he saw many dwarfs, who were
not much over four feet in height, and who had come in from the country.

Professor Frederick Starr, on his return from Mexico, in a letter dated j6th
of September, 1895, wrote me as follows:

" Aguas Calientes is a city of perhaps jo.ooo inhabitants. In a single half-hour
in the market we saw seven adults who were not more than 4 ft. 8 in. high. Of
one of these we have a photograph which I shall be glad to send you presently.
The people of Mexico generally are small. There is an unusual amount of differ-
ence between the males and females in stature. The women therefore are gener-
ally small. But the cases mentioned above were far below the ordinary stature.
The little people you mention, quoting from The Tribune reporter, are certainly
from Aytzcaputzaico, which is connected with the City of Mexico by street cars.
They are very small, retain their old dress, are reserved and very primitive. I am

1^)

il;

83 Dwarf Survivals anu Traditions as to 1'yomy Kacus.

told that many of them live in hnIeK in the soft tepctatc rock. These are opecial
topics which I shall study hereafter. I have Indian authority for dwarf populations
near Lake Chapala in Western Mexico. . . . Several Indians at Chapala tell
me that there was a fiesta there nine years ago which was very well attended.
Among the people were about twenty little people, representing a dwarf race living
in the mountains. They are described as about a yard high. All wore knives, and
were very fiery tempered. They stood no teasing from the people of the region.

" I noticed an unusual number of little people going from Pucbla to their homes.
We saw a hundred, perhaps, go from market past us as we sat at a bridge. The
little stature was marked in both sexes, and most so in the women. Many adults
could not have been more than thirty-five to thirty-eight inches high. . . . These
little people probably came from Cholnla, or near there. Most of them were primi-
tively dressed. This I find commonly among the little people. They are conser-
:':i vative and reserved.

"Cretinism occurs in the Barranca, near Guadalajara. I have not looked into it.

■\l A dwarf race among the Chontales are reported to me. They are said to live in

I holes in the ground." Writing about the Little God. at Lake Chapala, he says :

" There are found, in the bed of the lake, very many curious little vessels of clay,

and. strange to say, spoons and ladles of the same material." The schoolmaster

fi, there said: 'The people that used to live here, unlike their neighbors, had a god

I' who was little: therefore the gifts that were made to him were little.'"

; I That once there was a numerous dwarf population throughout Mexico is

,ji proved, he thinks, by the small size of the Mexicans.

Mil From what Professor Starr has observed, it seems plain that the Mexicans are

a mixed race, with a large infusion of dwarf blood. Not only is their stature small
l!|i — in some localities notably so — but their women are still smaller. "The women in

i many towns would warrant us in calling the place a town «)f pygmies. The men

of those towns would not warrant the term. In many families where both parents
!i are little, the children of ten or twelve years are larger than either parents."

ti This is what occurs among the Spanish half-breed Nanos, as is plainly shown

by a photograph which I have of a large Chinese lookmg half-breed Nana from
Murcia. and her dwarf grand-daughter.

It seems that the most important authority on the existence of dwarf races in
Mexico is President Dias. " The word Chontales has two meanings. It is used to
designate a race of people, and it is also used to indicate anything strange or foreign.
So when President Dias, on a military excursion into wilder Mexico, saw some
anusually small people, and asked who they were, the reply was ' Chontales.' He
accordingly concluded that the Chontales were a race of dwarfs, and so informed
the Archbishop of Oaxaca." It is to be hoped that before long some explorer will

1,'

1' I

DwARi' Survivals and Traditions as to I'ycjmy Races. 83

ascertain where this pyK>«y tribe was seen by President Dias, and will visit thciii.

I rcKret that all my efforts have (ailed to KCt iiiformution from British IIondtiraH
as to the correctness of General Granada's estimate of the height of the Lacondon
tribe of hunters, some of whom live in Guiitemaia, while others arc within the
limits of British Honduras My correspoiidiiit there, Mr. Blancaneaux, did not
reply to my letter askiuK for further information on that point; so, backed up by a
letter from the Secretary of State for the Colonies, I wrote, in 1894, to Sir Alfred
Molony, the Governor, stating what I wished to find out, and enclosing an open
letter for Mr. B., to be forwarded to him. Since then I have heard nothing on the
subject— though I subse(|uently sent Mr. B.. by post registered, a letter and my
paper on " Dwarf Survivals in the New World." This will show how much trouble
I have taken, and how much dilticulty I have sometimes had in getting precise data
on this subject.

Another important confirmation by a press correspondent is that unconsciously
supplied by one who interviewed, at Ciiuinnati, last autumn, the German Dwarf
Operatic Company, and who stated tliat he had found that these Liliputians all
came from a district in the Black Forest, and were racial dwarfs, and not mere
accidents or freaks of nature. Professor Edwards, of the Cincinnati University, drew
my attention to this subject, as to which, no doubt, further information will come
to light.

I was fully prepared for some such discovery. Thirteen years ago my attention
was attracted by the name of some cliff dwellers in Abyssinia, which Jean Tem-
poral, in his translation of an earty Portuguese book on that country, calls "Vosges."
As I had, in 1863, suggested (j) that there must have been a migration from .Africa
to Europe in early ages, I made a note of these facts, intending some day to
enquire whether there are not traces of cliflf-dwellings, or clifT-dwellers, in the moun-
tainous country of Alsace, "the Vosges." In 1892, as .\dmiral Blomfield Pasha.
of Alexandria, and Mrs. Blomfield, were about to spend six weeks in the Vosges,
I asked them to look into the question. In a few weeks I received a local guide-
book> whiqh more than bore out my anticipations. In the Guide Joanne. Geradmer
(Paris, Libr. Hachctte & Cic. p. 26). we are told that La Schaume of Nisheim.
which surrounds Wurtzelstein, it is believed, is inhabited by a kindly disposed race
of dwarfs, who. when the herdsmen descend to the lower valleys with their herds
in the autumn, pasture their cattle, which are of very small size, in the upper pas-
tures, and make cheese till the spring. Among different authorities cited is the Foyer
Ahacicn, by Charles Grad. Admiral Blomfield Pasha wrote me that a very intelli-
gent fellow-traveller, a Frenchman, believed that there were many racial dwarfs in
that part of Europe, and that a careful search would put this beyond question. I

(3) Sm Hallburton, " New Matetiali for the History of Man" (1863), pp. 14, 23 and note, 41, 74.

Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to rvuMv Racks.

alio made en(|uiries as to the " tlwarfn of Sylt." which, it in !tuppo<icd, were exter-
minated by the Frisians. My infurninnt K<>t fur me the folhiwinR information from
the head of the ArchaeoloKical Institute of Kiel: "The people call traditionary
dwarfs Die Vnttrirdeschcn. Alben, If'iV/i/c, </ir Kleiiw I.eule |the Undcrnronml People.
the Albs, the WiKhts, the Little IVoplej, and there i> i\o end of SaKa> telling about
them. Our coui try and Sylt are full of them, and I heard some quite new to me
on this occasion. They have been ditiKinK lately in several places for skclctoni,
and the villaKem said, 'Yonder, under that villaKe, the Little People used to live '^.
and in another village the people said that uncler a certain moniit five sets of the
' UnderKround Folk' live<l, Inn they only had one cauldron (caaldron) betwc.'n
them, and when one party was invited by the »»ther the cauldron had to be taken
for cooking. The mount was opened, an<! a Iuikc cauldron was found. Now you
hear of kind acts done by these little men. and aKain of wicked, revengeful, spiteful
deeds."

Fifty years ago that intellectual Riaiil, Jacob (irimm. was far in advance of
scientific men of our day as to this (|uestion. He seems to have assumed tiiat there
was once a widely difTused dwarf population in northern luirope, and he K>ves in
his German Mythology nn immense amount of references and traditions as to dwarfs,
as will be partially seen on referring to the inde.x of that work.

In 1892-J, Professor Sergi published in the liulletin of the Royal Medical
Academy of Rome an important i)aper. showing that in early ages there must liuve
been a migration of African dwarfs to the Furopean countries bounding on flie
Mediterranean, and as far east at least as Moscow. He has made a comparison of
the numerous dwarfs he met with in Sicily anil Italy with skeletons of dwarfs found
in Etruscan tombs, and near Moscow — all re.Mnibling the dwarfs of the Congo.

Atavism is very enduring and far-reaching ; and generations, or rather cen-
turies, are not able to efTacc the traces of racial, or even fainily traits, as can be
seen in family portraits. The leading family in a district in Andalusia were sur-
prised and shocked at finding one of their number grow up in all respects a typical
Congo dwarf. No doubt they had inherited a remote Nano strain, which, though
long forgotten, had at last asserted itself.

Size, cotnplexion, etc., point out the places where a dwarf race must have once
existed. The Black Forest is probably one of these, ff)r the manager of the Germ.nn
Dwarf Operatic Company says he was able there to secure the services of several
very small dwarfs. Their relatives were generally of large stature. In Sicily, and
parts of Italy, Professor Sergi discovered and measured a surprisingly large number
of dwarfs, many of which were as small as Congo dwarfs.

The name, " Little Father," for the dwarfs of the Atlas, and sometimes in Spain
for the Nanos, must have drifted as far east as Moscow, when that prehistoric

DWAKK SUHVIVALS AND TRADITIONS AS TO FyC.MY KacBS. 8j

iniKration uf African dwarf* took plni-p, of which I'rofcsHor Scrni ha* t()I«I u«, for
ie still survivi's in tiiat slranKi" title l)y which the- Czar is i)ftcn atldrcHncd— LiM/r
latht-r.

I have liccn frc(|ucntly lt>l<l liy licrhi-m tliat I'ari wa* a naniv for mining dwarfit,
who wash Koid and ttilvcr itand. I did not notice any superstitioiiH dread among
the Berhcrs as to using the name, hut among the Spanish half-breed Nanos it seems
to excite the t>anie horror that it does among the Irish, Welsh and Highland
peasants. My Murcian informant nearly rushed from the room .it the sound of the
name, and liegircd of mc never to use it again. It is evidently an " unpronoimccable
name." This may he a superstition connecte<l with the belief that if you can get
hold of the name of an enemy who is .i magician, you can destroy his power over
you. A Highlander was ai)le once to capture a fairy wife by tinding out her name.
The Irish peasants will speak of "the good people," "the gentle f<dk," or "the
gentry," or " the little people," but you cannot get them to use the wt)rd " fairy "

There is a town ur hamlet in the Sahara, some days to the south-east of Tafilet,
called .liiii'tirfi (a corruption of Ait-Warrt, " the good petiple," " the excellent folk "),
of whom the place is a gre.it centre. (A'acr/ tcarfi tneans "a fine man").
In Spain the Nanos are called Adwarfi. lUii the old Murcian woman used
the name unwillingly. Many names and subjects among the Nanos are sacred or
■■ tabooed." She t(dd me she knew much about the Cabrillas (or " the kids ")— the
I'leiades; l)Ut it was not lawful t<j speak about those stars.

Iloth in Scotland ;ind southern Morocco wc meet with artificial mounds, in
which there are chambers. In southern Morocco they are inhabited by dwarfs, who
lake into them at night their little cattle. One of my informants, a Berber Jew,
told me that, when a boy, he ventured once to sleep in one of them; but that the
Berbers generally are afraid to enter the small, dark passages that lead to the central
chamber; and call the little entrances " rat holes."

The name I'cchI, which is used in Scotland for a dwarf, and is more familiar to
us as " Pict," is to be found south of the Atlas. A " Large Haratin " (a native of
the Dra, who is descended from dwarfs) told me that he belonged to the Ait-Pecht.
His dwarf klicks m.ide the name sound like Psecht. On one occasion, without
having been questioned on the point, my Spanish informant, in presence of Mr.
MacKitchie, gave me an account of the dwelling-places of the Nanos of Aledo,
which, she said, were built of large stones, covered with earth, and which were
evidently similar to those of the Adwarfi and to the Weems of Scotland.

The head of a branch of my family for centuries went by the name of Pitcur,
from owning Pitcur Castle, in Forfarshire, Scotland, now a ruin. Mr. MacRitchie,
at my request, visited a place near the castle, in which I heard that there was a small
passageway leading into a hill, for I fanch d it must be a Pict-cur, a dwelling-place

DwARi' Survivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Races.

or oiiclosiirc of dwarfs. The idea proved to have been well founded, and he wrote
to nie that it was one of the best speiiniens of a Picts-Ilouse that he liad ever seen,
lie afterwards learned that he was not the first antiquary who had explored it. If
there is any foundation for the wonderful legends that tell of the oldest castles in
the Nor.h Country haviiiK been built by dwarf masons, Titcnr Castle must have
been their handiwork.

Grinirii, in Lis " German Mythology," (4) shows how widespread was the belief
that the first created rr"e were dwarfs, ilesiod says the first race of men died out,
and became blessed spirits, who were the guardians of mankind. In the West
Indies (5) there was a very similar belief. The mothers of the first generation ail
fell in love with a primev.-"! Lothario, and tleserted their children, who grew up
stunted, and ultiin.-itely died, and became Toiia (guardian spirits), and were wor-
shipped by men.

Among the Zuni and other Pueblo Indians the first generation of men are
called " child ancestors" (their name being written variously, Koko, Koka, or Kaw-
kaw). They arc intercessors for rain, and initiate youths, aiu. take an important
part in certain rites. They are represented as dwarfs, and are evidently liable to
hunger, judging from the amount of provisions with which they have to be sup-
plied when they visit their descendants. Among the Klamath Indians there is a
belief that there are certain dwarfs whose little footprints can be seen in the snows
of the Cascade Mountains, but who are only visible to the medicine men, whom
they instruct in the mysteries of the medicine-lodge. The Micmacs have a very
similar belief in little men wlu.- live in the woods, and who, if conciliated success-
fully by a Micmac, will give hir.i magic lore, .'\mong the Choctaws there was a
belief that little "Men of the Woods" catch the young men, and. after putting
them through an ordeal of good-natured teasing, initiate them. Bopuli, a mischief-
loving Robin GoodfelU)w, is the Kolcol^uli of the Pueblo Indians.

Mr. J. A. Watkins. of New Orleans, an old gentleman whose father lived
among the Choctaws, and who when a boy learned their language, writes me that
in the first half of the century a deputation of Choctaw chiefs waiter 1 the Gov-
ernment agent, and begged him, as they were fe.iring the efTects of a drought, to
let his two .sonj, young boys from eight to ten, visit them and bless their crops
Willing to humor them, he let his sons go. When they h.-id been t.iught the proper
rites, they went through the ceremony so well that a heavy shower fell next day,
and they returned home loaded with presents. Dwarfs could no longer be procured
to pray for rain, and the nearest appro.ich to a dwarf was a young boy !

Others pr.ictise this pious raud. Our little May Queen, and the Lord of

(4) Sec Sulybrata Trans. U., 563-9.

(3; " Kerr'i Voyagea anH Traveli," III., 134.

Dwarf Survivals and Traditions as to Pygmy Kacbs. 87

Misrule of inciliacval festivities were no iloiibt oticc dwarfs. At the heKinnitiK of
May the Japanese have a little kinK and i|ueeii, who are to be seen also at St.
Michael, in the A/ores, where at Whitsuntide, amid an iniiuense erowd of spec-
tators, a little king and i|ueeii aie carried in state to the cathedral, where they are
in great pomp crowned by the el.Tgy. A procession then takes place to some
tables at the market place, where they preside over the feast, in which the poor
participate. In China a little ,<irl receives the olTerinns to the dead. In India (i>)
Durga. or Kali, is represented by a little girl, who sits in a " bower of leaves." In
a similar bower a little child-wife in the western Soudan receives the nod Sokar,
no doubt the same as the ancient dwarf-god of the Egyptians, Ptah-Sokar-Osiris.
In Kgypt there was a great feast at Pithom at the beginning of May. at which
two little girls olliciated. who were called Urti (" the two Queens "). Possibly
they may have been two little brides for .\nuk. who is so venerable a divinity that
be may be only another type of the dwarf-god. Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. In the Tonga
Islands, Alo-Alo, the god of rain, when he visited the earth, was wdconieJ by a
little child-wife, who presided during the festival in a leafy bower.

We find that the Atlas dwarfs and the Nanos predict the future by watching
the relK'ction of " the Seven Stars " in a bowl. The famous cup of Nestor, sup-
j)osed to have been a divining cup. had two groups of Pleiatles on its handles. In
modern Kgypt the person who tries divination by a bowl is always a boy. The
.Atlas dwarfs, who " know more about the stars than other men." drive a good
business in the HaLiam line by blessing (if not by cursing). A little Ait Atta. from
near Adwarti. who was stolen from his parents and sold as a slave, but ran away
and found his way to Tangier, told me in iS(;.j that the Little People are greatly
feared by his tribe, who address a dwarf as Sidi Baraker ("our Blessed Lord").
" When we see them coming, we lay down our presents before us, and bow down;
and they put their hands on our heads, and bless us and our crops, and take our
presents, and go away."

The Hushmen claim that their primordial mothers were th.' Pleiades, a star
group which the ancients regarded as " Royal Stars." According to Grimm, dwarfs
were supposed to be of " royal birth." Wherever we find dwarf tribes, or their
descendants, there we find vestiges of the Year of the Pleiades nd of a worship of
those stars.

There is a marvellous and puzzling vmiformity in the ideas of primitive r.ices
as to festivals, magic, healing by incantations, etc., which can only be accounted
for l)> -issuming that, in the most remote prehistoric times there must have existed
an era, in wh'ch was developed a rude system o( initiations, that diffused, p ^served,
and at the same time stereotyped, the scan'.y stock of star-lore, beliefs and domestic
arts of those early days.

(6) sir Wi" Jonet' Worki, IV., 13*. ».-i.

i* I

THE TIKI-TIKI.

Professor Saycc, as we have seen, in his note to Herodotus (B. Ill, Ch. 37),
connects the name of " the Creator" of tiic Egyptians, I'tali, with that of the
Palaihi. The philoloKicai argument is cunfirnted by the fact, that both Ptah and
the I'ataiki were dwarfs. Not only in ICgypt, but also in Greece, the oldest of the
jfods were pygmies. Venus of Cyprus was a dwarf; her son was Pygmaeus, and her
husband, \ ulcan, was iu> dcjubt a Dactyl, uiie ot the dwuri siiiillis and magicians of
Crete. Selden says that the Great Gods of Palestine and Syria were pygmy tleities
(I'ataiki;. Movers, in tiie tirst chapter ui his I'hoenizier, says that "that group of
deities called Dactyls, Corybavtes and Cyclopes, were similar to those old Germanic
divinities, now known as ' Cobbolds.' " I had not seen that passage when I sug-
gested in my paper on " Dwarfs and Dwarf Worship," that they were " like our
Fairies and Brownies."

The name, Pataiki, is still to be heard. In parts of North Africa, and probably

in Syria, the Jews hold a festival towards the end of April, called " the Great

}^ Play," and also Pataiki ! When I asked an old Syrian Jew who lives in Alexandria,

Egypt, what was the meaning of the name Pataiki, he replied, " Kabir in God;
Kabiri means a lirge angel, and Pataiki means a little angel." and that the name,
Cabiri, is connected with the last day of the eight-day Feast of Tabernacles.
Pausanias identities the I'ataiki with the Cabiri. But the oldest sources of religious
thought among the ancients were the Mysteries, and these, it is admitted, all
sprang from the venerable Mysteries of the Cabiri (or dwarfs).

When i asked natives of southern Morocco, ' f4ave you ever heard of the
name Tiki f" I carefully avoided using the reduplication. They all said, " Yes,
Tiki-Tiki, Tiiki-Tiiki; that is a name for the IJttle People"; and subse(|uently a
half-breed Spanish Nana gave me the same reply. The range of Tiki-Tiki extends
to Polynesia, where it is used for ancestral dwarf-gods, one of which, the dwarf
Creator, Tiki, resembles the dwarf Creator, Ptah, of the Egyptians. " Tiki" and
" Tiiki," seem to be a shortening of thoi,e names for dwarfs and dwarf-gods, so
familiar to the ancients, and still used in Morocco— Pfl/i*i, and Pataiki, The Tiika-
Tiika (a name not hitherto known to anthropologists) are very small dwarfs in
South Afric?, who, the Kaffirs say, ate a perfectly distinct race from the Bushmen.

The Tiki-Tiki. 89

Through his tutor, Dinuzuhi informed mc that the Zulus have killed them nearly
all off, as " they arc not fit to live." The Kaflirs greatly dread them as most
dangerous wizards and magicians.

Tiki wc can trace even to Peru, where, according to Santa Cruz (see Markliam's
Narrative of the Kites and Laws oi the Viicas pp. 8j, 84 and pliUc, and y8), the
Supreme Cjod, " thu Creator," was called I'icci Ccapac (sometimes softened into
Ticsi Ccapac), and Tica Ccapac, and was represented by an egg-shaped symbol.
He was born of a condor's egg, and was, no doubt, the same as the primordial
dwarf (jod of the Mayas, whose temple at Uxmal was " the House of the Uwarf,"
and who was born of an egg (see pp. 124, 125, 135 and 142).

Far north of Spain we find the Tiuke-Kobbolds of Germany; and still fartlu-r
north, we read of Tlu-kr and Nain, two of the primordial dwarfs (forty-nine in
number, or 7%7), that, according to the Icelandic Voluspa, were created before
mankind.

In America, too, (he range of Tiki is wider than I had supposed. Thus two
of the most important little Ko-ko, or Child-Ancestors of the Pueblo Indians, are
called Soo-tiki. The Araucanians (Chili), who, like the Peruvians, worshipped
the Pleiades, called the Supreme Being "To<|ui." .\mong the Kaftirs he is "Ti(|Uo," a
name borrowed from the Bushmen, whose i»rimordial mothers were the Pleiades,
and who at the rising of those stars dance and sing, " Oh, Tiipia, F.ither above
us, send us rain !"

Many years .igo, Professor Tylor, in his valuable work, " Primitive Culture.
I p. 28.?, identified the dwarfs of northern folk-lore with a prehistoric dwarf popu-
lation; and Professor Wyss has taken a similar view of the traditionary dwarfs of
the Alps, who he supposes were dwarf tribes forced to take refuge there by larger

neighbors.

" Tor then also in the country

The goud dwarflin^s still kept house;
Small in form, but highly gifted.
And so kind and K^nerous." — M tiller.

(See Keightley's Fairy Mytliy.. Holm's Antiq. Library, p. 264-5.)
Professor Wyss' conclusions have recently been confirmed by Professor Kohl-
mann's discovery of the bones of Pygmies there, and by Professor Sergi's con-
clusions as to a migration of African dwarfs to southern Europe and to Russia,
who resembled the Tiki-Tiki, or Akka of fMiuatorial Africa.

In America we meet with traditions as to similar dwarf races. My inference
that Ticci, one of the names of the Creator of the Peruvians, showed that he was
a Dwarf God, has been confirmed by a point which Mr. Stansbury Ilager has
suggested, that "the Indians of Chincha (Peru) believed that their country had

)

)ii

90 The Dwarf Domestic Animals of Pygmibs.

hcen previously inhabited by a population of dwarfs, wlioso l>ones they found in
tombs (Cicza dc Leon, chap. 74. quoted in Spencer's Socioloffy.)"

The Iro(iuois say that in their former raids on the Cherokces, tiiey met witii
a tribe of dwarfs, very numerous, and living in caves, and, though small, stronger
than ordinalry men. (See Erminnic J. Smith's paper on the Iroquois, Report of
Bureau of Rthnol., 1880- '81.)

THE DWARF DOMESTIC ANIMALS OF PYGMIES.

(Kead before ihe Canadian Institute, November 14, 11196.)

For years I have enjoyed the honor of being a corresponding member of the
Institute, but up to the present I have contributed nothing to its Transactions. If
I have not shared the fate of the proverbial " unproductive fig tree," it is due to the
forbearance of the Institute, and their charitable hope that, if spared by them, I
might do better in future.

It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I offer my first instalment, a paper
of interest, not on account of the way it.s subject is dealt with, but because it opens
up for the first time an untrodden field of science that is likely, in proper hands, to
yield important results. Whatever will hereafter account for the diminutive size of
the domestic animals of pygmies, will also explain the origin of the dwarf races of
men; and, possibly, this may be true vice versa.

One of my most persistent critics was, among my friends, called " fascinating
subject." as this was a pet term of hts. Judge my dismay in June last, on reading
in an article on " l'yti»>y Kacvs," the following ominous sentence, with which it
begins : " Professor Starr's article on ' Pygmy Races of Men ' in The North
American Review contains much interesting information regarding a curious and
fascinating subject." To my relief I found that he admitted most fully all my
contenti,on!>. • The existence of dwarf tribes in the Atlas, similar to the Akkas of
Equatorial Africa, "had been demonstrated"; that there are diminutive Nanos in
the Pyrenees wsis also admitted ; and also that strong evidence had been adduced as
to the existence of dwarf survivals in America. I could h.irdly believe that the
writer was my old friend but for a significant omission. He fully accepted my
discoveries, but forgot to mention my name in connection with them. Still, to
have converted him to that extent was eminently satisfactory.

The Dwarf Domestic Animals of Pygmies. 91

He concludes with some very sensible remarks, which are especially interesting
in connection with an even still more fascinating subject. " The Dwarf Domestic
Animals of. Pygmies." " It is evident that the existence of pygmy races has passed
out of the region of myth and fable into that of history and science. Our infor-
mation regarding these strange races is still incomplete and inexact, but if is being
steadily augmented and brought in line with accepted results in biology and
anthropology. The facts already adduced suggest many interesting reflections,
but, perhaps raise more problems than they solvo. It seems clearly impossible (?)
to regard the pygmy races as owning a common origin, although their tendency to
conform to a single fairly well-defined type is very curious.

" Is their case one of degeneration, owing to some special circumstances of
climate and environment, or do they represent a remnant still remaining in a stage
of development long since left behind by the rest of the human species ? We cannot
say with certainty, but such questions may yet become capable of solution, when our
information on the subject has become more extensive and exact."

In !8<x), when I visited Morocco to look into the subject of racial dwarfs there,
one of my first informants as to their small animals was a halfbreed dwarf at Tangier,
about four feet high, who is to be seen in the Soko, or market place there. In my
" Dwarfs of Mount Atlas " (p. JS), we find him say. " The dwarfs arc very brave, and
great hunters of ostriches, having small, swift horses, that arc called by a name,
meaning ' those that drink the wind,' and that are fed on dates and camels' milk,
and are very lean, and, judged by their looks, would be set down as worthless.
This description of ithese ostrich hunters agreed with that given me by iny Berber
servant in 1888." A rabbi from Ternata, on the Dra, also said (see p. 29), " There
are many of them (the dwarfs) near the Soudan. The Arabs fear them, and pay to
be allowed to pass through their country. Their horses can do without water for
four days, and are called dTvimiuagh ('they that drink the wind')."

Thtre is a place called Adwarfi, two or three days to the south-east of
Tafilet, which is a great resort of the dwarfs, and a part of the Saharan
Atlas is called the Black Mountains, where is the River Dora, iiinl
where there are many caves, in which the dwarfs live with their cattle, They have
an Arabic name, meaning " the people that own cattle." A little .Ml .Xtta from near
Adwarfi, and also afterwards a Jew from that region, described the dwarfs there as
living in hillocks, in which there are very small entrances, leading to a central
chamber, into which, at night, they drive their cattle, which are very small. Mr.
MacRitchie, in his " Testimony of Tradition," speaks of the " weems " of Scotland,
which are precisely similar structures to the hillocks of the Sahara ; and in one of
them, he says, in its central chamber were found the bones of a small ox.

In i8o.1 Mr. Carlo Bru7eau, of the Villa de France Hotel at Tangier, told me

92 The Dwarf Domestic Animals of Pvgmibs.

that twenty years ago. diirinR a time of famine, he " saw a man bringing into
Mogador for sale a string of shaggy ponies. When asked whence they came, the
Moor replied, ' From the mountains (tlie Saharan Atlas) ; there, horses, shcip,
guut.s, cows, men, all are very small.' "

In the same year the dwarf tribe that inhabits the Great Atlas, not much mor^
than a day's journey from the City of Morocco, were described to me as owning
little sheep, donkeys, goats and cows ; and a Moor offered to bring some to
Mogador. should I wish to buy some of them.

The Barbary donkey is well known, a pretty, tiny specimen of the breed, gen-
erally black, and very active and strong for its size.

Nearly always, wherever pygmy tribes exist, or must have once existed, we
find very small domestic animals. Bent, in his " Mashonaland," says that they are
very diminutive throughout South .Africa. This even extends to the poultry. A
hen's egg there is hardly larger than a pigeon's egg.

This is also the case in Europe. Wh»*rever there arc survivals or very distinct
traditions of early dwarf races, there we invariably find small breeds of domestic
animals. In Brittany we not only have occasional survivals of very small people,
but also very diminutive cows and ponies. In Shetland and the Hebrides wc have
very conclusive tradhions as to dwarfs, and there, too. we find little Shetland ponies,
small '■ black-faced sheep. " etc. In Wales, too. with its undersized, dark-com-
plexioned people, wc meet with little Welsh sheep and cows. In the same way in
Kerry, where the tales of the Skillimilinks. and " the little red-headed blacks " are
to be met with, there we have the .same types of animals. The little Kerry cows
are famed for their good <|ualities. In Galloway, too. in South-western Scotland,
where history tells ua of the warlike, small-sixed Pechts. who claimed the right to
lead the van in armies, we find the well-known ponies called " Galloways." as well
as small cows.

The popular belief of the herdsmen and cbeesemakers (Macaires) of the
Vosges Mountains, not only that there are pygmy henlsnien there, who dwell in
c."nes in the precipitcms cliffs of that region, but also that these dwarfs have dwarf
cattle, is most interesting. On this point I ni.iy ijuote the following passages from
my paper on " Dwarf Survivals an<l Traditions as to Pygmy Races."

" Thirteen years ago my attention was attracted by the name of some cliff
dwellers in Abyssinia, which Jean Temporal, in his translation of an early Portu-
guese book on that country, calls ' Vosges.* As I had. in 1863. suggested (see
Haliburton, ' New Materials for thd History of Man' (1863). pp. 14. -'j. and note,
41. 74) that there must have been a migration from Africa to Europe in early ages.
I made a note of these facts, intending some day to enquire whether there are not
traces of cliff dwellings, or cliff dwelhrs. in the mountainous country of Alsace.

The Dwarf Domestic Animals ok Pvgmies. 93

' the Vosges.' In 1802, as Admiral Blomfield Pasha, of Alexandria, and Mrs.
lilomficld. were alxitit to spend six weeks in the VosKes, I asked them to look into
the (|Hestion. In a few weeks I received a local Ruide-book, which more than bore
out tny anticipations. In tiic tinide Joanne, Cieradmer (I'aris, Libr Ilachettc &
Cie, p. j6), wc are told that La Schaume. of Nisheim, which surrounds Wurtzelstcin.
it is believed, is inhabited by a kindly-disposed race of dwarfs, who, when the
herdsmen descend to the lower valleys with their herds in the autumn, pasture their
cattle, which are of very small size, in the upper pastures, and make cheese till
the spring. Among different authorities cited is 'The Foyer Alsacien.' by Chas.
Grad " " In iHij.i (i.e., after I had heard frcni Blomfield Pasha), I learned in
Morocco that, two days south of the Great Atlas, there is a high mountain called
Voshe, the inhabitants of which are dwarf cave-dwellers who are calle<l Ait Voslie
(the Voshe Tribe). Professor Schlichter says that the Akka dwarfs of E(|u.itorial
Africa are known to their neighbors as Voshu, and also Tiki-Tiki, n.iines con-
nected with the Akka dwarfs of southern Morocco, who are also called Jed-ibwa
' the Father of our Fathers.' "

The range of the name for dwarfs. Tiki, or Tiki-Tiki, is almost world-wide, (i)
When the Akka, or Tiki-Tiki of Ivjuatorial Africa wandered north to Fnrope,
they must have brought their diminutive cattle with them, for in Baker's " Albert
Nyanza " (i8f)(), p. yi). a region where the widespread Akka, or Voshu. are to be
found, we ;ire told that " the cattle there :ire very small. The goats and sheep arc
(|uitc Liliputian."

In Ceylon, the original inhabitants of which arc the little Veildahs (called
often '■ Devil-dancers"), there is a very diminutive breed of sacred oxen, whose
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
wliere he lives, there is a similar breed of oxen, and that 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 i>ygmy 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 Hows,
" .and this is no fable, for there is really, it is said, a race of dwarfs, both men and
horses, which lead the life of Troglodytes." (See Hist. Animal. VIII. 2).

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

(I) S«e " The Tlkl-Tlkl." page 88.

(>4 The Uwakf Domestic Animals uh Pygmies.

men, says of ihc Western Ethiopians (evidently the ilwarfs of the l)r:i atwl the
nortiiern Sahara, whom I iiavc alhuled to), "their nuule of hfe is wretched. They
are, for tlie most tiart, naked, and wander from place to place with their Hocks.
Their flocks and herds arc small in size, whether sheep, t(oats or oxen ; th' do^s
also, thonKli tierce and ((uarrcUunie, are small." (Sec Dohn's Classical Library,
Vol. III., p. ,170. i«57.)

It was puinle«l out in iKi;i. in my " Dwarfs of Momit .\tlas," that pyKinies are
supposed in northern Morocco and in Nuhia to he Cyclops, and Ih.it, as the dwarfs
of the Atlas, like other natives ol southern Morocco, wear a siiiKnlar houmous,
on the h.irk of whicli is worked an immense eye, a yard in leni;th, " the people with
the eye " nnist in time have hecome " the people with only one eye." This view,
as well as my contention that the dwarfs of the Atlas have little domestic animals,
arc confirmeil hy Kohert Hrown, Jr., who in his " Neptune," says that the Cyclops
of the Odyssey were an aKricultnral people of North Africa, who had diminutive
cattle, the milk of which yielded very rich cream.

I have omitted to refer to two curious points : that there are in several isolated
and inaccessible localities in the Southern States little commututies composed of
survivals of those pyumy tribes that have disappeared from the west coast of Africa :
and also that there arc on the Atlantic seaboard little ponies, the descendants,
probably, of a small breed that belonRed to these dwarfs, and thut were shipped
with them to America. Stranne to say, iluir name is " Tcki horses."

Dr. Weir's inten^tinj; article in The I'ni)nlar Science Monthly for June. iSqfi,
on "The PyRmy in the United States" (which, however, docs not refer to these
small horses), will well repay a perusal.

I invite the attention, not only of anthropoloRists, but also of zooloRists, to this
subject: Arc these little breeds the oriRin.d stock, and have domestic animals
Rradually become larRcr .ind stronRer. just as cultivated plants have ; or have
scores of thotisands of years of privation dwarfed them and their pygmy owners ?

It is very desirable that zoologists shotdd circfn'ly study and api)ly the investi-
(^ations of Yale naturalists and palaeontologists as to the origin of the horse in
America, which would seem to indicate that the ordinary horse had an even smaller
prototype than the little " drinkers a( the wind " of the Sahara, in a fox-like animal
with five toes, developing in later ages into a larger, horse-like animal with a cloven
foot. " After that the deluge " — some catastrophe that put a final stop to horse-
raising in .America in primf)rdiaf tmies.

I also suggest a point which zoologists may follow up with good results.

Mr. Cunninghame Graham, three or four years ago, in an article on Argentina,
said that the horse of the Pampas diflfcrs from the ordinary horse, the lumbar
vertebrae of which are one more in numbeir than those of the Pampas hor.es. This,
he said, also applies to Barbs, and he thought that the Spaniards must have brought

The Dwarf Domestic Animals oi' I'vomies. 95

out Moorish horses with them to ArRcntina. I tried, when last in Morocco, to
get a skeleton of ,t narl»ary horse examined by a veterinary Hurge<m, but did not
succeed. If the Harl) tiilTcrs also from ordinary horses, it probably Kot its peculiarity
from the little breed <if ponies in the Sahara. It is very important to ascertain
whether the latest type of fossil horses in .America resembled the Harbs or the com-
nmn horse in this respect, (j)

Henceforth we have immensely Improved chances of solving the problems of
the origins of small breeds of ilomestic animals, and of |)yKmy races of men— for
what will explain the one, will also settle the other.

As respects the latter, the tendency ot scientific thought is to regard dwarf
races of men as having been the original and earliest specimens of humanity on the
earth, and to yield to them the pl.ice so long occupied by a supposed " missing
link." The latest traveller in Africa, Professor Doii,'ddson Smith, writing last
summer to The World an account of Abyssinian dwarfs discovered by him, says :
" Although they live among «)ther native tribes, they difTer totally from them as
respects their principal ethnological features. This fact strengthens the theory that
the African pygmies are not degenerate specimens of the tribes among whom they
live, bill arc the remnants of the first ami original population of the Dark
Continent."

Mgr. Lerey, Papal Nuncio to Fast Africa, says the >ame thing, and asserts th.nt
the dwarfs think so, too, and despise all the larger races as fanrtius. They claim
to be the first, and ohiest, and n(d)!est inhabitants of Africa.

It may be worthy of mention that a review of the l,itest book on .Anthropology,
Hutchinson's "Prehistoric Man and Beast" (Applelons, N.Y.). says: "Certain
analogies lend weight to the idea th.it possibly Stonehenge was erected by the
dwarfs or fairies, who, in a previous chapter, are shown to have been a real people.
Various writers have come to the conclusion that a dwarf population akin to the
Laps were the actual inhabitants of the ' fairy knowes.' or underground megalithic
structures, and became in time the elves and fairies of folk-lore."

The following is an extract from a letter received from Professor Putnam,
President of the American Assticiation for the Advancement of Science, dated
September .1, 1897 :

(a) After thl> p.iper wm wrillen tl was found thai the fossil horse resrnihled the Itarb In this
rnpeei. The followlnR paragraph appeare<l in The New York Kvenlnic I'osI, July inlh. iSg;: "A enrlosltjr
recently seen al the Salt Lake stock yard* was an 'AzIrc' horse, .16 Inches hl^h, and waighlnR 190 lb*. Il
was caught In Arizona. " ('an II be ponsible that the American horse has left ■ pony representative ? The odds
analnst Its eiislence arc very Kreat. The probability is thai the little horse Is the descendant of a " lekl " pony
ihal had been brouxbt west by some Immigrant. The point, however, Is worth enquiry.

ft Thk Dwarf Dumestic Animals of Pygmies.

" I have tiMt forKottcn my prDniJKc to send you a nicmoraniltiiii about the horse's
t>'4>ih found at the ruins of Cnpan. I hoikI you liy this mail, aildres^ed the same as
thi» letter, a copy of the .Memoir glviiiK tlu- report of the museum explorations in
CofMin. On page Jl you will lind a mention of the horse's tooth which was dis-
covered in an ancient tomb in the ruins of Copan. Mr. Saville. who excavated
the tomb, docs not see any possibility of the tooth haviuK K"t into the tomb after
h was made : and it seems hardly probable, although some burrowiuK animal miKht
have carried it into the tomb. This tooth is either that of the well-known post-
pliocene horse of America, the Hquus fraternut of Lcidy, or it is the tooth of the
introduced /:. cahallus of Europe. It is impossible from the tooth alone to deter-
nimc which animal it l>elonK!« to. The similarity is so close that Dr. Wortman, who
i» the l>est authority ()i\ this subject, is not willinK to risk his reputation by saying
to which species this tooth belon(;s.

" Of course, if there is no doubt about this tooth having been buried in pre-
Columbian times, it settles the ijucstion of the co-existence of the horse with the
early inhabitants of Copan, unless they obt.iined a fossil tooth belonging to the
po»t-pliocene period and put it in this tomb.

" Some authors are of the opinion that the horse was in existence on this con-
tinent at the time of the advent of tTie Knropeans. You will find a statement made
by Scliastian Cabot after his expedition to the Rio la Plata in 15.27, where he says
be saw horses at a distance. The fact that the remains of horses have been found
in post -pliocene deposits in the southern portions of America certainly makes it
possible that the horse may have co-existed with early man in i\\a\ region. Still,
if this is the case, it is very strange that we have not found the remains of the horse
abundant in phehistoric sites, and th.it we do not find the horse represented in the
sculpture and drawings of any of our early peoples. Again, if the horse was in
exiMence in America, it hardly seems possible that the Mexicans would have been
•o wonder-struck by the appearance of Cortes and his men mounted on horses.

" So you see the (|Ucstion is regarded as an open one. I hope you may settle it."

fThc above letter suggests the <iuery : May not the horse have existed in pre-
Columbian limes without having been utilized as a be.ist of burthen or for the
saddle ? Whence did the breed of Indian ponies come ? R. G. H.)

PAPERS ON OTHER SUBJECTS.

IMAGE EVALUATION
TEST TARGET (MT-3)

1.0

I.I

1.25

I:; 1 2.8

ISO ■^~

1.4

25
2.2

1.6

^ ^>

'^'

^;.

'■^

#^-'^

'^.

THE HOLY LAND OF FOUNT.

[From The Academy (London), July 8, 1893.]

The following are extracts from a very interesting letter received by me lately
from Prof. Sayce :

" What will especially interest you is the discovery made at Contra-Syene by
Prof. Schiaparelli in a tomb which was discovered last year, just before his visit
to Assouan. An inscription in it states that Hurkhuf, who was buried in it, had
been sent on an exploring expedition to the south by Pepi II. (of the sixth dynasty),
and that he brought back many gifts from the king of Ammaan, including a Denga
dwarf from the Land of the Holy Spirits, which danced divinely (i) like the Denga
dwarf which the deceased Chancellor, Urdudu, brought back from the land of Pun
in the time of the king Assa (of the fifth dynasty).

" Leon des Avenchers, speaks of dwarfs on the upper Yuba called Dokos, or
Dongos (Bulletin de la Societie de la Geographic de Paris 1866, v. ii., p. i)."

The expedition of Hannu to Punt has been hitherto supposed to have been
the earliest. But that of Hurkhuf dates back between 5,000 and 6,000 years.

A thousand years separates it from the second expedition — that of Hannu—
which in its turn was a thousand years earlier than the mission of Queen Hatasu,
so boastfully avowed to be a wonder to gods and men. As her mission went in
an entirely diflferent direction from that taken by Hannu, it must have gone to a
different country. If the Periplus of Hanno (the date of which no one can even
conjecture) was a record of the voyage of Hannu to Pount, it is clear that, in order
to reach that country, he sailed towards the far West, through the Straits of Gibral-
tar and down the west coast of Morocco. This inscription is important as con-
necting Poun with dwarfs and with the West, for Amenti (the Egyptian " Land of
the Blessed") simply meant "the West" {ement), as Erebus {ereb) also did. "The
Holy West," says Bunsen, " was the Land of Truth." But the East was regarded
as " the filthy East." In the Book of the Dead we read, " I have not eaten food
where Osiris is in the filthy East."

Bunsen says Put of the Scriptures (Punt) " is admitted to mean in the strictest
sense Mauritania." Nowhere are there to be found fuller authorities as to Put or

[(i) Probably this meant, not " divinely," but " like the dance of the god," which was represented by
the dwarf.— R. G. H.]

(99)

loo The Holy Land of Pount.

Fount than in that learned work. " Die Semiten," by J. G. Miiller, whose references
are well worthy of attention:

" The old suggestion," he says, " that Put refers to the Libyans was confirmed
by Champollion and Bunsen (Bgyl't I., 5"J). This was opposed by Rbers. who
placed Put or Fount in the East. ... As for the Lubu or Lehabiiu, both are
there (Gen. x.) mentioned as sons of Mizraini, but Put as brother's sons of Ham,
and the former were by the Greeks field to be the Egyptian Libyans in the nar-
rowest sense. Therefore, in Nahum 3 : 9, Put and Lubim. though mentioned to-
gether, are distinguished — the former (i. e., the people of Put or Punt) as in the
West, and the latter as the eastern. In the land of the Western, to the west of the
Triton Lake, are the city of Putaea (Ptol. iv., 3, 39) and the River Put (Jos. Anti(|.
i. 6, 2); yet both are assimilated, and the F.gyptians gave them the general name
of Tamahu, Tamhu, and Tehennu." (See also Pliny's Hist. Nat. v. 1.)

But there is an interesting bit of evidence on the point which has hitherto
escaped attention. It is admitted that Put was connected with Tarshish. Now
there can be no doubt that Jonah sailed to a Tarshish in the far West — a port either
on the coast of Spain or in Bus (2) on the Atlantic seaboard of Morocco. Berber
folk-lore comes in here with singular weight. In the ancient seaport of Massa (a
name which occurs in Genesis) there is a venerable temple, which Leo Africanus
says was partly built of whales' bones, 10 commemorate the f.ict that a prophet was
swallowed by a whale, and was cast up alive on the seashore there. He discusses
the subject at some length, and the people of Sus are all familiar with the tale.
The temple is so sacred that, although it is now covered with sand, the Sultan, dur-
ing his late raid into Sus, paid it a visit.

In The Asiatic Quarterly for July is a letter from myself on " Racial Dwarfs in
the Atlas and the Pyrenees," in which there is an allusion to my discovery of the
existence of very ancient and greatly venerated ruins, called Foun or Fount, in the
district of Warzazat, at the head of the Dra Valley, south of the Atlas. Assuming
that Queen Hatasu's mission to Fount was historical, between three and four thou-
sand years have elapsed since any attempt has been made to reach the cradle land
of the Egyptian race, that birthplace of their oldest gods, " the Holy Land of
Punt," " the brightest of all the divine lands."

In a subsequent letter Prof. Sayce says:

" I discovered the name of the Biblical ' Phut' in an inscription of Nebu-
chadnezzar three years ago, which led to some correspondence in The Academy.
It is mentioned in connection with Nebuchadnezzar's invasion of Egypt, and was
garrisoned by the ' Ionian' troops of Amasis. I suggested that it might he Felusium

(2) Sus, like other Berber names, was preceded by the definite article, Ta-Sus (" the Sus "J, like
the French L'Angleterrt.

The Holy Land of Pount. loi

or n.irka. The Germans, however, preferred some place on tlie Arabian coast. All
that is clear is that it was part of the dominions of Amasis."

Prof. Sayce niixht have safely ^j;one farther west than Barka, as far as the Did
and the Dra, where there are still to he seen puzzling citadels or castles, evidently
built by some great military power, not the Romans, for they knew nothing of
southern Morocco, otherwise we should have heard from them of Punt and the
dwarfs of the Atlas.

But there is a curious proof in our constellations of the early history of that
country. The story of the Yone (the Gaunche for "a prophet"), who was
swallowed by the whale, came to Greece in two ways. One story told
how Hercules went to Atlas to learn astronomy from him, and how he
leaped in ful. armor down the throat of a sea monster, slew it, and
afterwards escaped, after having been, like Jonah, three days in its belly.
The name of Hercules (Herkla) is still a household word near Massa. An-
other, and a later tradition may possibly have come through Persian sources.
F'Tseus delivers Andromeda by slaying a sea monster, and turns Atlas into a
tnountain by showing him the Gcgon's head. A native of the country near Massa,
who was my servant in 1887-8, often told me wonderful tales of the petrifying
effects of the stare of a dubbhali (a hyena) — a belief that is widespread, but nowhere
so prominent as in Sus. At Joppa, from which Jonah sailed, there were preserved
interesting memorials, not of Jonah, but of Perseus— the bones of the sea monster
slain by him, and the chain that had bound Andromeda. It is a curious fact that
the word Yone, in the ancient Berber of the Canary Islands (opposite Massa),
means a Magus or prophet. The most convenient access to the sea from Poun or
Fount in the Dra Valley is at Massa.

I am disposed to think that this story of Perseus came to Greece after the
Persian occupation of North Africa, and was preserved in the names of stars and
constellations. This would show that most of our northern constellations came
from the land of Atlas, the astronomer, and identifies Mount Atlas as the seat of
the earliest civilization. The fact that Homer knew so much more of the Atlas
country than later Greek writers, may be due to traditions of it brought back by
Ionian mercenaries, who were employed by the Libyans, as well as by the Egyp-
tians.

Referring to the discussion as to the dwarfs of Mount Atlas, Prof. Sayce says:

" I return you your book with many thanks. Your name will henceforth be
attached to the discovery of dwarf races in North Africa, as Schweinfurth's is to
that of the dwarfs of Central Africa. It is one of the most important discoveries
that have been made for a long time. I wonder if your dwarfs have anything to
do with the Neolithic people who carved the forms of animals, birds, and men on
the sand.stone rocks of North Central Africa, when the Sahara was a fertile plateau."

BERBER AND GUANCHE TRADITIONS AS TO
THE BURIAL PLACE OF HERCULES.

[Proceedings of British Association, 1887.]

It has been shown by French and other writers that the myth of Hercules and
Geryon came from the Gauls and Kelts, and that it was borrowed by the Greeks
and Romans from them. The Keltic Hercules is fully described in Smyth's " Dic-
tionary of Greek and Roman Mythology." There is clear proof that the natives
of Europe derived these myths from the people of Mount Atlas, which was the
scene of them. Hercules visits Atlas, and studies astronomy with him; resides
among the Hyperboreans of Mount Atlas; makes the Straits of Gibraltar, and sets
up the Pillars of Hercules. He sails west to the Island of Erytheia, and steals
the cows of Geryon; finds his way to the Eden (i) of those daughters of Atlas, the
Hesperides, or the " Western ones," and steals the famous Golden Apples.

It is interesting, therefore, to have, if possible, local legends which connect
him with that country. Ancient maps represent near Mogador "the promontory
of Hercules." Why was it known to the Greeks by that name, for the natives
call it "the Mountain of Iron"? An explanation has been found by me in tales
of Hercules told by many of the natives of Sus. A Beni Bacchar, or Bcs Came
(the name of a tribe on the coast, near Massa), said that "Bacchar, or Biba-ween
(the drunken) made Ben Cantin's enemies drunk, and took them pr jners, and
Ben Cantin lived forty years in the temple at Massa; but, in consequence of an
outbreak, sailed away with all his treasures to the Mountain of Iron, and hid
them there. Du Karnaiin, or Herge, a great freebooter, hearing of this, sailed there
to find them, but without success. He then sailed to the Canaries in search of
the 366 cows of Geryon, an'' went into a cave there, in which was a large dog
with feet like those of a camel. The cave looked towards the sea, and was at the
foot of a great mountain. He never came out, and the people closed the cave
with stones."

Another gave me a still more ancient tradition. " Du Karnaiin, called Herk-
lein, or Herkla, made the Straits of Gibraltar. In his time Sus and the Canaries

(i) Some years after the above was written, I found that a part of Mount Atlas is called " Dmim Kiel
Eden " (the Holy Land of Eden), and that there is a tribe called "Alt Heden."

Berber and Guanche Traditions. 103

were one country. He went to a large mountain to steal the flocks of Geryon,
that came out always to pasture at sunset, and were watched by a dog named
Terras. There was a great cave at the foot of the mountain, called Hebcr, or
Kafoun Herger. He went into that cave and was never seen again; and the cave
was closed up with stones and lime, and cannot be found by men. There is a
prophecy, that when it is opened the world will be changed."

That time arrived a hundred years ago, when an earthquake exposed a vast
mummy cave in the peak of Teneriflfe. In the far end of it is an opening in the
face of a perpendicular cliff, which is hundreds of feet above the sea.

The Guanches (natives of Teneriffe) must have once had a similar tradition,
as they still call it (no one knows why) " the Cave of Herke." It is now evident
why Hercules never came out of that cave. He went into it as a mummy !

How was it that that secret cave, closed thousands of years ago, was known
to the Susi, and even the fact that there was an opening in it that looked out
towards the sea ?

Thousands of mummies were scattered over Europe in public and private col-
lections, and it is possible that to this hour Hercules, as a mummy, grins neglected
on the shelves of a museum.

It is difficult to imagine that this story of the Beni Bacchar is not an his-
torical tradition. It must have been known to the Greeks that Hercules sailed to
the Peak of Tenerifife from the Mountain of Iron, for they named it " the Prom-
ontory of Hercules," and the Guanches must have h^ard that he was buried in a
secret mummy cave in the Peak of Teneriffe, when they called it " the Cave of
Herke."

GYPSIES AND AN ANCIENT HEBREW RACE IN
SUS AND THE SAHARA.

i Transactions of Brliisli Associaiion, Section H., 1887,1

The Province of Sus, as respects the customs of it:, people, is, and always has
been, a terra incognita. Excepting a few lines by Herodotus, nothing has ever been
written about them; and this is the first attempt to describe them.

The Susi speak a dialect of Berber called Shilhach. and many of them re-
semble different descriptions of Gypsies. Some ate skilful bellfounders, others make
ornaments and arms, others saddlery, others dishes. Others are silver and gold-
smiths, and arc famous for their skill as artificers. Most of them tell fortunes,
some by sand (who are called Amlad or Kemliien), others by beads, others by a
flower ; some by watching a fowl after its head has been struck oflf ; some by a
shoulder blade. The women, in some tribes, tell fortunes by the hand, and are
called Guessani, or De Guessan. Some indulge in a sort of magic, and profess
to call up spirits, or to make a person at a distance appear, using a powder on
the fire which stupefies the enciuirer. They also make charms for finding inoney,
curing illness, or calling back vagrant husbands, or for the production of olive
branches, and for supplying all the wants of humanity.

These people, no doubt, have been for thousands of years connected with the
Timbuctoo gold trade, and have picked up wandering habits that have become
hereditary. They have secret signs and passes among themselves, called " the
words of the Kafila" (tent or lodge), which perhaps may be connected with the
well-known Jewish name, the Cabala.

It was shown that the Hyperboreans were the people to the south of the
Great Atlas or Riffian mountains, called in Greek mythology Ripaean mountains.
Beyond the Hyperboreans are, according to Herodotus, " the one-eyed Arimaspians."
He showed that there are vestiges of the Osirian cult lingering among these
people.

There is an ancient Jewish town near the Sahara, an entrepot of the gold
trade, called Ophran, on the River Ophrar ; not far from it arc the Oulad bu Saba,
or Sabaeen. The latter guide the caravans by the Pleiades, and are, he contended,
the old Sabaeans, whose caravans wandered all over the ancient world. They are
superior to the other tribes, and are looked up to very much, as they possess
secret lore not known to others. Heeren conjectures that the gold trade of Africa

must always have been in the hands of a religious guild.

(104)

Gypsies and an Ancient Hebrew Kace.

105

A bracelet from the Sahara was exliibited. It was of horn, in the form of a ser-
pent, with twelve divisions representing the months. In each of the twelve divisions
there were two Krf>iips of seven stars, making twenty four Ki"onps in all.

iikrher jews.
Ancient writers, referred to by Joscplnis, and an eminent authority. Tacitus,
contend that Libya was the cradle of the Hebrew race. An old author, quoted
by Josephus, describes a race that were in wcslern Ethiopia before the days of
Abraham, the Judadeans. They were probably the Jews of Libya and the Sahara,
differing from what are known as the Coast Jews, the descendants of fugitives
from Spain and Portugal. They arc not often seen in the coast towns, living with
the Riffs and Susis as their tradesmen and business men. and securing protection
by a small annual payment. But there are independent tribes that own no master;
some on the southern Atlas; some far east, near the desert of Touareg; some
also called Daggata in the Sahara, and as far south as the Niger. Tribes were
described, one of which is protected " by the Tomb of our Beloved Lady."
that Joan of Arc of the Berbers, a Jewish woman called Kahina. who headed
them, and became their queen. The Arabs were compelled to make peace with
her followers; and so great was her sanctity, that the district around her tomb is
a safe asylum for the Jews. Some of the Jews are black, with woolly hair ; but
most of the Berber Jews are very good-looking, and their women have the reputation
of being the most beautiful in the world. The Berber Jews look down upon the
Jews of the coast towns as schismatics, and arc very rigid in their discipline.
differing from the others in their dress and rites.

THE LIBYAN TEMPLE OF SOLOMON.

The writer showed that, from a remote period, there must have been in Libya a
temple which was claimed to be " the Temple of Solomon." In Smith's Dictionary
of the Bible (Tit. " Onias ") is something on the subject of this temple. Procopius
also says it existed in his day. What has become of it since it fell into the hands
of the Moslems is not known.

The writer pointed out a singularly large number of the names of places in
Sus which can be traced in Genesis, and suggested the enquiry. Has there been
a migration of Hebrews from Palestine to Libya, or vice versa ?

The Jews and the Gypsies must have been cast in the same mould, but must
have been made of very different material. That would naturally be the result
of thousands of years of a life in common, in connection with the gold trade and
caravans of that country. They are equally unchangeable, and distinct from the rest
of mankind, — Siamese twins, like, and- yet in some respects utterly unlike. We are
almost tempted to call the Gypsies "the other peculiar people"!

GYPSY ACROBATS IN ANCIEN'l AFRICA.

liY Bu Bacchar.

Part I.

(From the Journal of the Gypsy-Lore Society, 1890. |

" To the west of it (the Nile) dwelt the group of tribes wiiich bore the general
name of Kibu or Libu, th" ancestors of those Libyans who are so often men-
tioned in the historical works and geographical descriptions of the ancients. In-
habiting the north coasts of Africa, they extended their abodes eastward, as far as
the districts along the Canopic branch of the Nile, now called that of Rosetta or
Rashid. From the evidence of the monuments they belonged to a light-colored
race, with blue eyes and blonde or red hair. According to the very remarkable re-
searches of the French General Faidherbc, they must have been the earliest rep-
resentatives of that race (perhaps of CeUs ?), who emigrated from the north of
Europe to Africa, making their way through the three Mediterranean peninsulas,
and gradually taking possession of the Libyan coasts." (i) Such is the sketch which
Brugsch-Bey gives of the Berber race ; but they have a far wider range than he
seems to suppose, as they not only inhabit North Africa and the Soudan, but are
also, as they have been for thousands of years, the terror of West Africa far be-
yond the Niger, where they are known as active ivory traders and merciless slave
hunters, and are erroneously called Arabs from ♦heir being Mohammedans and
able to read the Koran.

Brugsch-Bey does not refer to the existence of two very distinct branches of
the Berbers, (2) who seem to have sprung originally from very different races, one
to the north-west, inhabiting Mount Atlas, who generally have red or light-brown
hair, and are frequently almost giants in stature, and the other, a smaller, darker, and
more vivacious race, who are to be found south of Mount Atlas, and especially in
the province of Sus, and are the.^efore known to us as Susis. The former, named

(i) " HUtory of Egypt under the Pharaohs," by Henry Brugsch-Bey. 2 vols., 1879. John Murray :
London.

(2) How little Is known by scholars as to the Berbers is shown by the fact that two of the most
competent authorities on the early races of Europe and Africa differ in toto from each other on that subject ;
one. Canon Isaac Taylor, asserting that the Berbers are a swarthy race, while his critic. Professor Sayce, denies
that they are dark, and holds that they are fair, with blue eyes and light hair.

(«o6)

GypsY AcRouATs IN Ancient Africa. 107

by us Rirt'ians, or Riffs, call themselves " Ribi," or " Riphi " (3) (in the plural
" Riphai-in "). The Susis differ from them as much as the Gypsies do from the
Scottish Highlanders. The Barbary Jews, who substitute an " m" in the plural for
the Berber " n," call these two races "Riphai-im" antl "Susini," familiar names that
are strangely suggestive of those puzzles to commentators on Genesis, the giant
" Riphaims," and their neighbors " the Zuzims in Mam."

It is probable that the fair-skinned Libyans are much less numerous now than
they once were, in consequence of intermarriages with the darker Susis and with
negro slaves or their descendants. The Susis, who were known to the ancients as
Getulians, are generally a Gypsy-like, nomadic race, and are evifl.L uly referred to
as such on the monuments of the fourth dynasty.

" It is a noteworthy phenomenon," says Brugsch-Bey, "that as early as the
remote times of the fourth dynasty of Egyptian sovereigns, some people belonging
to this race (the Ribu, or Libu), men, women and children wandered into Egypt
to display their dexterity as dancers, combatants and gymnasts, in the public games
which delighted young and old ; just as at the present day tho Egyptians still
amuse themselves with the buffooneries and skilful tricks of wandering Mogrcbins.
The Libyans, however, who appear on the walls of the sepulchres from the fourth
to the twelfth dynasty, are distinguished from the reddish-brown Egyptians by their
light-grey or light-brown complexion, suggesting the probability that they may not
have had a very close relationship to the white Libyans of later times."

The visits of Mogrebin acrobats to Egypt were not confined to that period,
for Brugsch-Bey, referring to the close commercial connection that existed between
Egypt and the people of Palestine and Libya, says: "The arrival in Egypt of the
representatives of these nations is a fact which is proved by numerous paintings
and inscriptions in the mortuary chapels. The light-colored Libyans frequently
visited Egypt to show their address in warlike games and dances."

Remote as may seem the era which dates back (according to Brugsch-Bey)
6,000 years, or 2,000 years before the Exodus, and to which we have traced the con-
nection of Moorish acrobats with Egypt, yet if E. Stanley Poole's views in his
original and most valuable article on " Magic" in " Smith's Dictionary of the Bible"
are correct, long before the date of the earliest monuments the wandering ma-
gicians and fortune-tellers of the Soudan and the southern Atlas must have had an
even greater influence on prehistoric Egyptians than they now have on the ignorant
and superstitious savages of " Darkest Africa," to whom they sell their charms and
amulets.

" Magic, as we have before remarked, was inherent in the ancient Egyptian

(3) To the south there meets us a tendency to change the final t Into u. Beni Haml (the Sons of Ham)
liecomes Bern* Haml, which is abbreviated into Bu Haml : Susi becomes Susoo. Hence Rlbl and Libl become
Rlbu and Libu.

io8 Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Afkka.

relJKioii. The ritual is a Hystem of incantations and divinations for making amulets,
with the object of securing the future happiness of the disemhodied soul." " It
eannot l)e doubted that the knowledRe and use of the maKical ainidets and incan-
tations treated of in the ritual were held to be necessary for future happiness." The
later chapters of the ritual "contain mystical names not lnariuK on [Egyptian
etymology. These names have been thought to be Ethiopian. Ihcy either have no
signification, and are mere inagieal gibberish, or else they are mainly, at least, of
foreign origin."

'■ The regions of terror traversed, the mystic portals that open alone to magical
words, and mon.sters whom magic can deprive of their power to injure, are here
already in the book that was found in part by King Mencheres 4,000 years ago.
Hearing in mind the Nigritian nature of ligyptian magic, we may look for the
.sources of these ideas in primeval Africa. There we find the realities of which the
idea is not greatly distorted, though greatly exaggerated. The forests that clothe
the southern slopes of the snowy Atlas, full of fierce beasts, the vast deserts unten-
anted save by harmful reptiles, swept by sand-storms, and ever burning under an
unchanging sun, are the several genii of the Egyptian Hades. The creatures of
the desert, flic plains and slopes, the crocodile, the pachydermata, the lion, per-
chance the gorilla, are the genii that hold the land of fear." " No wonder that the
|<rimitive race imagined the evils of the unseen world to be a recurrence of those
ag linst which they struggled while on earth."

He considers that the fact that the name for Hades (Rrebus) came from Ereb
(the west) points to the west as the country from which the Egyptians derived their
ideas of the journey of the soul to Paradise. He might have strengthened his
argument by referring to Amenti, the Egyptian name for Hades, which is derived
from Ement (the west).

Tataren is a name for Gypsies not only in Sweden and south Germany, but also
in .Africa, where it is met with as far south as Timbuctoo as Tatari, Karkari, or
Gargari. Tatari is also the Berber name for the morning star, " the holy morning
star, that rises to the West of the land of Punt," that " land of the gods." With
us Lucifer, " the prince of the morning," is suggestive of Tartarus, and of the
Gypsy name for God — Dyvel ! May not the name for the Gypsies, Tatari, have had
the same meaning as " Arab," which is derived from Ereb. the west, i.e., " the
western people"? The Berber Ataram (the west), with the common prefix ta or /,
gives us Tataram. May not the name Helebis also come from Ereb (the west) —
Hercbis .' (4)

Who are these Mogrebin acrobats and jugglers which Brugsch-Bey says still
aniiuse the Egyptians by their skilful tricks or performances ? It is possible that

(4) Urub Is the name for a Gypsy at Smyrna.

,11

Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa. log

they are Gypsies who are to be loniu! in pKypt. I>"t wlio. acconlinR to Captain
Newbolil, do not bi-ionK to that country, for " one tliinK is cirtain. that iIkm-
Gypsies are strangers in titc land of KKypt." He describes them as bein« tif three
classes. Heleijes. I<ha«arin (pi. Gargar). and Nuris or Nawas. "The lielebes deal
in horses, and have a bad character for honesty; their women, called Feheniis. are
the only ones who practise fortune-tellinn and sorcery. The I'Vheniis are noleil
for their chastity. The Uhanarin are not. The men of the khaKariii are tinkers
.and blacksmiths, and sell cheap jewellery and instruments of brass ami iron, and
many of them are athletes, mountebanks and monkey e.shibitors. The women are
rope-dancers and musicians. They are divided into two classes The Nuris are
hereditary thieves."

As one of the classes of the KhaKarin bears a distinctly Moorish name, licit
cr Rifai, it is clear that they must have come from the KifT country, but that they
cannot be Riffians, who are not nomads, and have fair skins and linht hair, and do
not indulge in ma^ic or fortunc-tellinK. It would be hasty to assume that horse-
raising was confined to the Helebes. Denham describes a line race of Gypsies
whom he saw in Burnu, and who have a very fine breed of horses, and resend)le
the bcst-lookin>{ of our Gypsies. He calls theitl Shouas. Cooley (in his " Negro
land of the Arabs," p. io«), after trying to prove that the Karkari are a tribe to
the east of Timbuctoo, who belong to a large town called Karkar (corrupted, he
says, to Kaukau), which is situated on a river of that name, (piotes Dupuis ("Two
Years' Residence in Ashanti," App. s.O as saying : " Some of these rivers open
communication with a tribe t)f heathens called Gargari, who live in tents, and arc
not black, but ? red-skinned race, yet they are not of Arabian stock. The best
breeds of horses and mules come from these parts." They no doubt belong to the

people whom Denham speaks of. Cooley says that "this extract from Dupuis is j||||

evidently a description of a Berber tribe, whose loose observance of Mohammedan

rites have caused them to be considered as Pagans." He gives an authority for the |fi j

assumption that ' Beni-Gurgar is probably the chief place of the Karkari." Ibn 'f,

Batutah speaks of a "Sultan el Karkari"; Karkari, Gargari, are probably cor-
ruptions of Tartari.

In the country south of Mount Atlas there are many tribes that practise fortune-
telling and magic ; some of them are jugglers, others musicians, others tinkers,
others workers in leather, or brass, or iron ; bellfounders. makers of caldrons,
brass dishes which are ornamented with marvellous skill by repoussi' work, sad-
dlery and horse-trappings. They are also gold and silver :>miths. snake-charmers,
etc., and generally betray a Gypsy cast more or less. They have been for thousands
of years famous as horse-breeders. Leo Africanus, who wrote long before the
days of " Darley's Arabian," or " Flying Childers," says that these people south of

no Gypsy Acrobats in Anc r Africa.

Mount Atlas, in his day had careful pedigrees of their stock extending back two
hundred years.

We must await the results of future enquiries before we can say who of the
races inhabiting that region arc Gypsies and who are not. One of them, how-
ever, that resembles the Gypsies is the Bciii Dacchar, wlio are found near Massa
on the Atlantic coast, and who call themselves by a name which sounds like Bcs-
Carne. They have at times been proscribed and persecuted by Mohammedan
fanatics, and, although they are not now molested, their name seems to be men-
tioned with hesitation by the Moors. I have seen many of them, and have, as far
as I could, fou'-.d out their modes of life, traditions, etc., but, like most Gypsies,
they are very reticent, and it is only when you know something about them
already, and gain their confidence, that you can get them to speak freely. It is
probable that when I first heard the name of Beni Bacchar it wp.s not known to
more than two or three Europeans, even in Morocco. I have since found that the
ancient inhabitants of one of the Canary Islands were called Beni Bacchar or Bent
Bacchos. In early ages, therefore, these people must have found their way from
Sus to the Canaries. They still have a tradition that the two countries were once
one, but that the sea broke through and separated them. It is clear, therefore,
that if the Beni Bacchar or Bu Bacchar are of Gypsy descent, we must assign an
enormous antiquity to the presence of the Gypsies south of Mount Atlas, a country
which would be best described by its ancient name, Getulia. There are no doubt
different classes there, one of which at least seems to represent a higher degree or
order — the Oulad bu Saba. According to a Susi, Hammed Azue, almost
the only native from the country near Massa who could speak English
fluently, they are greatly reverenced as a superior caste, and as being saints.
They reside a day's journey or more in the Soudan, and guide caravans or accabars
to Timbuctoo. A little farther south is a somewhat similar tribe called Shanghit,
but inferior to them in status and attainments. Mahomed Alemi, one of them,
stated to me, as to the Saba-een or Shebuyan, that they wear a black or dark blue
haiik and dress differently from others. He says in his language bulobara (a word
which Leland says is connected by Gypsy tradition with Stonehenge) means a
sheik of architects (or master mason ?) (s) " The women of the Sahara tell for-
tunes by the hand. There are people called Tinghars (tinkers ?) whose women
tell fortunes." In eastern Europe the Gypsies are called Atinghars. A is the common
Berber prefix.

Mahomed ben AH, of Twat, says that the women of his trib; "tell fortunes by
sand, and are called Remliien and Romni. There are people living in caves who are
called Tinghar, and mend pots. They find tin in the mountains. Kasder is the

(S) A well-known word among the Gypsies of eastern Europe, some of whom are called Calderari.

Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa. hi

word for tin. He knows the word tin, but thinks it is Arabic." Hadji Ali ben
Taleb Sinjik says that " at a large town tlie people speak Shilhach, and the women
tell fortunes by the hand. We tell fortunes by the hand, and the women by killing
a cock, and by stones. There are caldron makers who go by themselves, marry by
themselves, and have a language of their own. Globali is a bell ; kulehin, a crucible :
spitiri, a tin-man ; augari, gold. Head ornaments arc daga or mlaga. They repre-
sent something — some stars. There are dishes hung up on trees to divine by the
sound. They call it tannakas."

Hadji bu Zima, from Tazawalt, between Sus and Ephran, says that his tribe
is " Ida ou Tills. The Oulad bu Saba tell fortunes. There are people called Gues-
sani. Amongst the Oulad bu Sidi Bounu, Shangit and Ait Amaran, the women
tell fortunes by the hand ; also Adgoots and Bu Salem, near Ophran, tell fortunes
by the hand and shoulder."

Hadji Mahommed (already examined) here stated that " the women of his
tribe tell fortunes by the hand and the men by sand. They have a feast called
Adah, which lasts forty days, the same as that of Aiissawas. It takes place at the
beginning of the cold weather." There is a tribe in the Sahara called Naiil, the
women of which are prostitutes, also Azlia, and one called the Oulad our Abah.
Among the Barimiken (6) and Bcni Izracl (Moors, not Jews) women tell fortunes.
Such people are called Gargar. Among the Helebes the men only tell fortunes,
some by beads and some by stones, among which is a black and a white one ;
some by a flower. Kaiton, among the Beni Bacchar is a tent ; paniali, a strong
drink from dates ; manuch is a man. A rami is a man ; also gudjo; gor, a boy ;
chavo, a child ; rakler, a girl ; lacho, good ; puro, old ; turno or turro, a young
man ; purno is white ; kalo, black. The people who speak this language are called
Romani. Ktirbat, a Cabyle ; ainval or loh, an anvil ; koraki, a hammer ; kubala,
tongs ; pukil, bellows ; diklo, a woman's kerchief. We are called Zigani, and came
from the Soudan."

Hadji bu Zima, who was present, said that he did not understand what had been
said, as he did not know the language of the Beni Bacchar.

" Mahomed ben Ali bu Gerar lives near Massa ; knows the Tureiia (' the
seven stars ') and the belt of Orion, which is called Imanah. The Tureiiah go with
the caravans and guide them. They are called ' The Seven Whistlers,' because they
whistle for one of them that is lost." (This is a Gypsy name in England for those
stars.)

Mahommed ben Mahomed el Susi says : " The Saba (the Tureiia) are repre-
sented in the middle of the tent (of secret rites ?), hanging like a bunch of grapes.
There is a hole there called Bast, through which the stars can be seen dancing."

112 Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa.

These stars were " the dancers " among the Greeks and the North American Indians.
Hast is the name given to " the di.nce of the stars " by some Berbers, and evidently
points to that ancient Libyan goddess whom the Egyptians borrowed — Bast, the
goddess of dancing.

Hadji Omar Ait bu Gerar, of Afassa. district of Ru Amaran, says that " the
Reni Bacchar, or Bci: Cam, Hve in a country of serpents, beyond Agadir. They can
(nul gold in the night. The Susis are afraid of them. They take the fangs from
snakes ;uh! sell them. They tell fortunes— the women by the hand. They get
crazy in their dances. One of them tried to eat his own child." " They are called
in Arabic Rcmliicn, and Ainhal in Shilhach, from their telling fortunes in sand."

If we recall the various names by which the Gypsies are known in Europe, we
shall find that, almost without exception, they can be traced to North Africa. Rom
in Coptic means a man, and Romi is used by the Moors to express " the Ancients "
(the Romans), while Romani is one of the many names of some North African
fortune-telling tribes. It has often been conjectured that Gitaiw, the Spanish
name for Gypsies, comes from Tingitania, the ancient name of the north-west part
of Africa, derived from Tingis or Tinghis (Tangier). Zlotar reminds us of Shil-
hach or Shilhachte, a language extensively used south of Mount Atlas. Calderari
(caldron-makers) reminds us that among some North African nomads caldera
means a caldron, .\tingar is met with in North Africa, and has the common Berber
Ijrefix a before tiiigar (a tinker). Zigani or Sigcuiicr suggests a very common name
of places in North Africa, Sig, which appears in the name of a small tribe west of
the Draah, called Nezigen or Anzigen. Cingari or Zingari is the name of the most
widely-spread race of nomad Berbeis. They are, according to Leo Africanus, to
be found in the south-west of Sus, and as far south as the Niger. Their language,
which can be traced as far as the borders of Abyssinia, and is that used by the
Mandingoes and the people of Timbuctoo, is called Sangai, Sagiii, or Zagai. The
tribe is called Singhanah, by El Bekri, and is also known as Zenegar (no doubt the
origin of the name Senegal). " The Morabites," says Cooley, " who were all of
the Zenagah nation, as soon as they felt their strength, rushed at once from their
own deserts to the conquest of Barbary and Spain." They became for a time a
polished and settled race ; but when they were driven from power they " went
gypsying," and once more returned to the desert and became nomads. The same
thing occurred in the history of the Zenatah, their rivals.

The Beni-Hanii (the sons of Ham) are a numerous tribe of the Zenagar, who
practise fortune-telling and magic. One of them, examined by myself, has already
been referred to. We have seen that Tataren comes from Tartar! (corrupted in
Africa into Gargari or Karkari). It will be a curious fact if even their old Hun-
garian name, the " children of Pharaoh," was suggested by the Gypsies having

Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa. 113

brought from the west of Sus the name by which the people there were known to
tlie ancients, Pharussii.

It is possible that a philologist well acquainted with Gypsy languages may dis-
cover much which is hidden from an ordinary enquirer like myself. What has
been already accomplished by scholars in the field of Gypsy lore represents an
enormous amount of patient research under great difficulties, and shows that we
have much to hope for from their labors in the future.

These extracts from my note-book will amply suffice to establish that Getulia
(as I may call that country bounding on the Atlas to the north, and on " Darkest
Africa " to the south) was, and still is, saturated with fortune-telling and magic.
I have visited Morocco five or si.x times, mainly to enquire about these people, of
which Europeans, and even the Moors to the north, know but little. I have a good

deal more as to these nomads, but the extracts given for the present will suffice. \\

As they talk sometimes Arabic, sometimes Shilhach, sometimes Susi (a dialect of ^

the latter), sometimes perhaps Romani. it is difficult not to miss much that could

have been found out by more competent enquirers. But I spared no trouble, and ,

employed English, Maltese, French. Moorish and Susi interpreters, and also pos- i;

sesscd later on the advantage of having a remarkably intelligent native of Sus for '■:]

a servant, to whom I could always refer. If any mistakes have occurred from the '] ,

meanmgs or sounds of words having been misunderstood, this will not affect the li '

mam pouit which I wish to establish. {.;'!

The most striking instance of the antiquity of the Susis and of their being the same
now that their ancestors were when the earliest pyramids were built, is to be found in
some chance remarks made to me by Mr. Y., a merchant living lately at Mogador,
the most southern port accessible to Europeans. Nearly a score of years ago, while
in London, he heard much of "Arab acrobats," who were delighting English sight-
seers, and accordingly went to see them. After the performance, to his surprise,
one of them came up to him and said in Arabic, " I am glad t'< see you, Mr. Y. I
know you very well, though you do not know me." On being asked who he was.
he said that he had often seen Mr. Y. in Mogador ; that the troupe had been
organized from young men belonging to tribes south of Mogador, and that they
had been travelling through Europe, and had been very successful. They were
able to call themselves Arabs, as they could speak Arabic.

I subsequently met in North Africa the head of the troupe, who had retired
from the business, as he had been injured by an accident. He had organized his
troupe from young men south of Mount Atlas, and had been in St. Petersburg,
Vienna, Constantinople, Berlin, Paris, London. Boston, New York, Chicago, San
Francisco, Montreal, etc. He was a polished man of the world, who spoke English
tolerably well, and lived on a competence that he had laid by. I have one of his

114 Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa,

printed circular letters, which shows that he had kept abreast with the spirit of
the age. He heads it in an impressive manner : " Compagnie Imperiale Ottomane
de la Tribu du Bagdad, conij.o^ce de 30 personnes, 30 homnics et fenimes, sous la
direction du Chev. Sidi-Hadj-Ali-Ben-Mahommed de la Tribu Beni-Zoug-Zoug,
Decoree du Sultan de la Turquie." He adds a facsimile of the Sultan's seal, and
also the Turkish symbol, the cresent and the morning star.

Of course much of the above is proof of the Chevalier's inventive genius, for
neither he nor his people ever saw Bagdad, though it is probable he may have
received some recognition from the Sultan. He has as much of the Arab about
iiini as our Romanis have.

It almost makes one giddy to try to bridge over the vast abyss of nearly 6,000
years that separates this chief of a hand of Gypsy acrobats from him who led his
troupe 'to ancient Egypl in the days of the fourth dynasty. But a more startling
tact regarding these ancient and modern Roniani showmen is in reserve for us,
viz., that their patron saint now is (and probably always was) Moussa, or rather his
descendant, Sidi Hamed Ou Moussa, whose tomb in Sus is annually visited by these
acrobats and jugglers. The saint enables them to handle snakes and work wonders,
such as he himself worked when on earth. The tomb of the " original Moussa "
was nevei* found. The negtoes from the Soudan worship Sidna Moussa Barra,
Suldan el Bahar (our Lord Moses, the Lord of the Sea !) Barra is the Soudanese
name for the sea, meaning the same as Bahar. They dance and behave somewhat
like Aiissawas at their feasts. When they worship Moussa, they stick a staflf in the
ground, and, wrapping ribbons round it, pray, " Help me, O Sidna Moussa !"
They seem quite a different sect from the pious pilgrims to the tomb of Sidi Hamed
Ou Moussa.

The Gypsy is, as respects his superstitions, his traditionary beliefs and his
habits (some of which might be improved), the most conservative and unchange-
able of mortals. Even his half-brother, the Jew, in that respect is left far behind
by the Romani. But the most singular and amusing trait of the Gypsy, which
Leland has well described, are his cynical cosmopolitanism and his contemptuous
toleration of all faiths, as equally useful and equally false. He adopts the creed of
those he is among as easily as he does their clothes or their poultry. He never
allows his new religion to even become skin-deep, for it never gets beneath his shirt.
When he leaves a country, he leaves it his old faith and his old clothes as a legacy,
and is ready for new creeds and " pastures new."

If these acrobats of the fourth dynasty were Romanis, is it likely that two
thousand years later they adopted, and. what is more marvellous, ever after retained
as their patron saint, a wonder-working prophet of a strange race ? Is it not more
likely that Moses (Moussa) may have been, not a ttame, but a venerable, time-

Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa. lit

honored title of office, a heritage from an ancient race of wonder-workers that then
existed, and that— probably under a degenerate form— still exist ?

I was delighted to find that one European at least beside mysp'f has heard of
the venerated Hamed Ou Moussa, for our able Vice-Consul at Mogador says that
he has often been told of the pious pilgrims, snake-charmers, rope-dancers, jugglers,
etc., who kneel at the tomb of the saint.

As these nomad showmen six thousand years ago were probably as enter-
prising as they now are, it is not likely that they limited their wanderings to the
land of Egypt. Probably from time to time they may have visited, and have
amazed and amused our savage ancestors, and ultimately may havo brought with
them the bronze age to prehistoric Europe, leaving behind them, from Ireland to
the Black Sea, traditions of a race of marvellous magicians and cunning workers
in metals who dwelt in caves— the Wayland Smiths of European folk-lore.

I shall in a future article try to show that they gave to the Greeks, and even
to the Egyptians, some of their oldest gods and oracles, and that northern savages
owed to them many of the earliest germs of civilization.

GYPSY ACROBATS IN ANCIENT AFRICA.

By Bu Bacchar.

Part II.

[ From the Journal of the Gypsy-Lore Society, 1890.)

A visit to Morocco has recently brought to light a remarkable fact for which
I was hardly prepared, that the Sahara— not Sus— is looked upon by the Moors
as the cradle of magic and divination, (i) A chief of one of the most notable
tribes of these nomads of the desert, whom I have already described, has lately
distinguished himself by a most amusing bit of impudence. In 1885 a small
Spanish exploring expedition, which had ventured into the Sahara, was robbed by
the Oulad bu Saba of everything— camels, money, clothing, etc., and was left to
find its way out of the desert or to perish. It would seem that some of the party
in their fright must, in order to save their lives, have promised to pay something
in addition to the considerable sum that had been looted, for the chief of the Oulad

(i) Wandering Saharans often find their way to Syria, Persia, and even India. The magicians of
" The Arabian Nights " all came from Sus and the Sahara.

ii6 Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa.

bu Saba has lately travelled all the way from the Sahara to Mogador in order to
claim the amount which, he contends, is honestly due him. The Tangier news-
paper which refers to this matter suggests that he ought to be rewarded by a very
warm reception.

I find that the name Segani, or Singari, is very generally applied to fortune-
telling tribes of the Moors.

Leo Africanus (2) calls the Sungai of limbuctoo a black, vile people, but civil
to strangers ; and he adds that he cannot conjecture to what race they belong. He
gives an interesting description of the diviners, enchanters, cabalists, alchemists
and serpent-charmers of his day, (3) and draws an unpleasant picture of the vices
which female fortune-tellers introduce among Moorish women.

If the view advanced in the appendix to Hooker & Ball's " Morocco and the
Great Atlas" is correct, that the Zenegah language has no connection with the
Berber, a careful comparison of the former with Gypsy dialects might lead to
important results. (4)

The name of a Zulu chief who is now a captive in St. Helena, Shingani, is in-
teresting, as no one can imagine that Kaffirs or their ancestors can ever have been
Gypsies, and it is worthy of note that Shingani, who is a heathen, claims that Moses
was an ancient hero of his race. Mr. Borrow, who met some of the Oulad Sidi
Hamed Ou Mousse, did not consider that they were Gypsies ; but there is much
conclusive proof that their Saint Sidi Hamed, and also the original " Moussa," were
veritable Romanis. Mr. Joseph Thomson (in his " Travels in the Atlas and Southern
Morocco, p 366) says, in his description of the city of Morocco, " Farther on is
a juggler, who has shown his skill in European circuses, and by virtue of his
master. Si Hame:! n Musa, has astonished the Nazarene. His dress and manners,
and the English and French phrases which he shouts at us, make the matter cer-
tain." But the saint, vhile he gave him a deftness in sleight-of-hand tricks, also
bequeathed to him a less enviable heritage. " Abdul Aziz, besides being the saint
of Morocco, holds that position also in relation to the blind, the crippled, and per-
sons otherwise deformed. It is reported of him that on one occasion, on meeting
a rival saint. Si Hamed u Musa. and, being in an irritable mood, he cursed him,
and swore that all his descendants should b- beggars. Si Hamed u Musa was at
once put on his mettle, and swore that the children and children's children of Ab-
dul Aziz should be all deformed. Hence the fact that all beggars claim the one as
their ancestor or saint, and the presence of the crowds, of the diseased that gather
around the shrine of the other" (p. 357) •

(a) De L'Afrique, Traduction de Jean Temporal (Paris, 1830), liv. ii. 7.

(3) Liv. I. p. 3

(4) The general opinion now seems to be that the Zenegat language is a branch of Berber.

Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa. 117

Hence we must make allowances for that weakness for begging which the
Gypsy race too often exhibits. The great centre of the tribe of Sidi Hamed Ou
Moussa is at Tazzawalt, which is to the south of Massa. and near the sea coast.
There the representative of the Saint reigns practically as a king, and is, no doubt,
the most powerful man, next to the Sultan, from the Mediterranean to the Sahara.
During the recent raid of the Sultan into Bus, the ruler of Tazzawalt merely sent his

son as his repiesentative, to wait upon His Majesty. His wealth is very great, and .:

his influence extends over all the races of southern Sus, who annually frequent the
great fair at Tazzawalt, and for a time consent to lay aside their tribal wars.

My Susi servant used to tell me often about Sidna Moussa the ancestor of the
Saint, who, if his account of the Saint be true, must have had some connection with
one of the old Libyan gods who came from " The Land of the Gods" to Egypt,
"Bes (5) or Bas, the oldest form of the godhead in the land of Punt, which wandered
far, and gained a footing not only in Egypt, but also in Arabia, and other lands
of Asia, as far as the islands of the Greeks. The misshapen Bes, with apish coun-
tenance, is no other than the beneficent Dionysos, who, as a pilgrim through the
world, dispensed with hand rich in blessings, mild manners, peace, and jollity to
the nations." (6) According to Susi tradition, Sidna Moussa was wholly given to
mirth and frolic, and to nmsic and dancing, travelling from place to place in order
to make fun and to enjoy it, and always conspicuous by a remarkable coat, the
patches and holes of which were affectionately preserved by him. He ultimately
wandered far away, and was never heard of more, and it has been supposed that
he was killed in some battle, but his burial-place no man knows to this day. His

famous descendant Sidi Hamed was, no doubt, a much more dignified personage. \

Sidi Hassan was, according to my Susi, a bitter enemy of Christians, and is remem-
bered by, among other things, his possession of a white horse which was remark-
able for its beauty as well as for its docility, and which would stand motionless i |8
with an apple placed between its ears, while Sidi Hassan would advance several
paces ahead of it, and fixing his gun over his shoulder backwards, would hit the
apple with a bullet. This trick, even with the aid of a mirror, was beyond ques-
tion a notable one, and excited, no doubt, unbounded admiration among his fol-
lowers.

(5) The Bent Baeohar were also called Bez Game, Bes Carne, or Bes Comu. The first (Beni Baeehar
or BenI Bacobos) means ' ' the sons of the Bull," or perhaps " the sons of Bacchus," and the second " the homed
beast," a survival of the name, perhaps, of the old Libyan god, Bes.

(6) Brugsch-Bey's " Egypt Under the Pharaohs," vol. I. chap. vllU

GYPSY ACROBATS IN ANCIENT AFRICA.

By Hu Hacchar.

1 ART III.
(From the Journal of the Gypsy Folk-Lore Society, January, r'u>.|

If there is anything dear to the Gypsy and to the Susi, it is hedgehogs, but the
hitter has a far higher appreciation of tTiat animal than the former has. He looks
upon the meat as not only pleasant to the taste, but invigorating and stimulating in
its effects on the blast's. Nay, more, the hedgehog is the embodiment of wisdom, and
takes the place which the rabbit dots with the negro, or the fox does in German folk-
lore. I have six Moorish fables before me which have been already published, and
nut of these three are in praise of the sapient hedgehog. The favorite mode of
hunting hedgehogs is at night with dogs, when the sight of a torch blinds him,
and he can be easily killed. To make him tender you must put him alive into
boiling water, or if this cannot be done, as soon after his throat is cut as possible.

But I have not told all the wonders that a hedgehog can accomplish. Th'^re
are ninety-nine cures which it can effect; one of my informants writes that, " it gives
forces to the human bones."

There can be but little doubt that our '" Morricc" dancers were originally
Moorish dancers, and that our " Christmas boys" came from Morocco. Four years
ago I was surprised at a Moor, who was telling me about the customs of the coun-
try, describing a play where two men fight (one of whom, I remember, is called
Medi). One is killed, and a doctor comes with a magic phial, and puts it to the
lips of the defunct, who immediately becomes very much alive, and begins dancing.(i)
One of the characters is like one that is familiar to any one who has seen our
" Christmas boys " — a clown who has a bladder inflated, with pebbles in it, which
is fastened on the end of a stick, and comes down on the heads of bystanders. With
us he appears as " Little Devil Doubt" with a broom in his hand. These games
are called Marocaines by the French in Algeria, and by the natives Maracusa.

There is also a fight between two other men about a well. One is knocked
down the well, and is brought up dead, when the " leech" comes and revives hiiTi,
and a dance ensues. If the man's face is covered with mud. there will be a

(i) The Soldan of the Morrloe dtnoeri it killed, and revived by the magical content! of a " leech's " phial.

(ii8)

Gypsy Folk-Lore as to Stonehenge. iig

good year for crops ; but if he comes up bleeding, and free from mud, there is
trouble in store.

This fciist took place last month, and was, no doubt, a sort of harvest-home
and "All Souls," for, my informant says, the feast is " called Buharri, Builman, or
Assher, and is for the dead peop!' ."

It is to be feared that the history of the Gypsy will to some extent remain a
mystery to us, as the connection of Roni:\ni with Ifindostani cannot be ignored.
The utmost that we can assume is, that tlic African and the European Gypsies
originally belonged to the same race, one branch of which, long residing in India,
must have made their appearance in Europe five hundred years ago.

GYPSY FOLK-LORE AS TO STONEHENGE.

I'.

Leland, in his " English Gypsies and their Language" (Trubner & Co., 1872),
p. 5, says on being asked by an English Gypsy what was the name for the seven
stars in foreign Gypsy, and he told him that " There were once seven sisters, but
one of them was lost. They are called seven to this day, though they are only six,
and their right name is the Pleiades." " That story," said the Gypsy, " is like the

one about the Seven Whistlers (which you know is in the Scriptures, at least they |!

tell me so), that are said to be seven spirits of ladies that fly by night high in the
air, like birds. Once upon a time one got lost, and never came back again, and i

now the six whistle to find her. But people call them the seven whistlers, though
there are only six; exactly the same as your story about the stars." " It's queer,"
resumed the Gypsy, " how they tell these stories by sevens. Were you ever at Salis-
bury Plain ? There are great stones t'here, hori-bars, and many a night I've slept
there, and listened to my father telling me about the baker, for there is seven great
stones there, and they say that hundreds of years ago a baker used to come with
loaves of bread, and wasted it all in trying to make seven loaves remain at the
same time on each stone; and to this day he has never been able to get all seven
on the seven stones." " I think," adds Leiand, " that he told this story in con-
nection with ' the Seven Whistlers,' because he was under the impression that
it was also of scriptural origin."

Does Leland's Gypsy refer to vestiges of Druidical or pre-Druidical folk-lore, |

I20 ClYHSY KOLK-LORE AS TO StoNEHKNGE.

that had hngered anintiK the British peasantry down to the time of the arrival of
the Gypsies in England ? I am disposed to think that they broii({ht it with them.
and that an en<|uiry into the point may supply a clue to some of the early wander-
ings of the Gypsy race and may show that folk-lore can be u light to our steps,
where the lamp of history and of the monuments fails us. If they hrouKlit this
folk-lore with them, and applied it to Stonehengc, it is manifest that they must
have once lived in a country where similar megalithic remains existed. Where
can this region be ? They certainly did not come from Morbihan or Carnac in
Brittany : but, farther south we have a head(|uarters of the Gypsies in Spain, in
the south of which, especially near Malaga, there are many such vestiges of a re-
mote past. Still farther south, we find in Morocco similar remains, while in the
Sahara among the Beni-Mzab, megalithic monuments are still annually visited,
and feasts of the dead are held there, long rows of earthen-ware bottles and plat-
ters being left on them (probably for the use of the dead), till the next feast
comes round.

In the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society of Edinburgh for i8go and 1891 ap-
peared two papers on " Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa," written by myself, un-
der the iioiit de plume of " Bu Bacchar." Though that Society brought to light
a large amount of new data as to Gypsy races, the mystery as to their origin is
ds profound as ever, for the undoubted connection between Romani and Hin-
dostani seems to upset all theories as to an origin for them west of India. It is,
however, possible that the Gypsy tongue is now spoken and has been for thou-
sands of years, by ancient races in Africa, but this remains to be proved.

No doubt the present race of Gypsies reached Europe in the fourteenth or
fifteenth centuries, and claimed that they came from a part of Africa, which they
called ■■ Little Egypt"; and I have shown that there are tribes in Africa that
strangely resembled the Gypsies in name, looks and habits, and who employ many
words which are in use among the Gypsies. In my two papers I described several
strange races of fortune-tellers in Sus and the Sahara. There are different classes
there, one of which, at least, seems to represent a higher degree or order — the
Oulad bu Saba. They reside a day's journey or more in the Soudan, and guide
caravans or " accabars" to Timbuctoo. A little farther south is a somewhat sim-
ilar tribe, called Shanghit, who are inferior to them in status and attainments. One
of the Shanghit, Mahomed Alemi, told me that in his language bulo-barz (a word
which Leiand says is connected with Stonehenge) means " a sheik of architects"
(a Master Mason !).

Leiand does not seem to have known the meaning of " bori-barz," but I
found, on enquiry, that in some of the Gypsy dialects of eastern Europe, bulo-barz
(not bori-barz) means a Master Builder.

GyI'SV FoI.K-LoKK as to StONEHKNQK. 121

It is evident that Lolaml's Gypsy informant, who called seven stones at Stone-
hcnge " the Seven Whistlers," did not connect the name with any stars, as he re-
n\arkcd that the story of the seven I'lciades, told him by Lehmd, was very Ukc
tliat of the Seven Whistlers. But when wo i|uestion the (jypsy-like trihes of
southern Morocco, we find that the story clearly relates to the Pleiades. In niy
first paper on " Gypsy Acrobats in Ancient Africa," it is stated th.it we must awaii
the results of future cncjuiries before we can say who of the races that inhabit
that region are Gypsies, and who are not. (Jne of them, however, that is of
a Gypsy type, is tlio neni-Bacchar, who are found near XUissa on the At-
lantic Coast, and who call themselves also " Bez-carnc." The statements of sev-
eral of that tribe are given. " Mohammed hen Ali bu Gerar lives near Massa;
knows the Turiia (the Seven Stars), and the Belt of Orion, which is called
' Imanah.' The Turiia k<> with the caravans, and K'lide them. They are cilled
the Seven Whistlers, because they whistle for one of them that has been lost."

That name for the Pleiades has, I believe, a very limited ranne. Whence did
it come ? Early Greek mythology tells us that the Pleiades daily visited an island
in the western ocean, bringing ambrosia to the infant Zeus; and that every day,
in passing between the two rocks called " the Planctae," one of the Pleiades was
lost; but daily Zeus supplied another Pleiad to take its place.

I need hardly say that the Planctae are generally supposed to refer to the two
Pillars of Hercules at the Straits of Gibraltar. It may be suggested that in early
ages the Greeks knew nothing about Spain, or of the Atlantic Ocean. But such
an idea we now know would be a very mistaken one. Thousands of years before
the days of Homer, the Kingdom of Libya, that great civilized power in the West —
as to the existence of wlucii in early ages the Mirage Oricntale has so long blinded
archaeologists — was able to supply thousands of men with arms and armor for
the invasion of Egypt ; and was rich enough to be able to employ a large force
of Carian and Ionian mercenaries, who no doubt carried back with them an
accurate knowledge of the geography of western and south-western Libya, which
must have lingered down to the time of Homer. So highly did they appreciate
the extent and importance of Libya, that Herodotus says that the lonians made
Libya (not Egypt) one of the four quarters of the world. But Libya ceased to
employ Carian and Ionian troops, and the Phoenicians, and after them the Car-
thaginians, monopolized the trade of that country, and kept the outer world
in profound ignorance as to it. Hence, in time, the Greeks lost all knowledge of
Libya and the Atlantic, and transferred the scenes of early myths as to that part
of the world to the Danube or the Caucasus. Ionian mercenaries must have carried
back with them a bit of Libyan folk-lore connected with the Straits of Gibraltar,
which must have survived among their descendants until the days of Homer.

I2i GVHSV Ful.K-I^UMK AS TO StONKHKMIK.

Anyone who has licard. nt iiiKlit the HIkIiI of wildfowl. iniHt have been struck
with till- ptHuli.'ir whistliiiK sound caused l>y the wiuK!* of the birds, and which,
unless explained, seems very uiy»tcrious. Now the wildfowl and other niiKratory
birds by a stranKC instinct avail themselves of the shortest route across the
Mediterranean, and cross nt iiiKht over the Straits of Gibraltar. Men may chanRc.
but the birds do not, .uul to this day vast hosts of wiuKed nii^raiitH iwice every
year cro>s ilie Straits ; and the Moors at Tangier, wlicii in the stillness of the
niKht they listen to a mysterious whistliiiK in the air, connect it with the Pleiades,
and l)elieve that they hear " the Seven Whistlers" whistling? for one of them that
lias been lost.

Gypsy folk-lore as tr the baker and StonchenKC is also plainly connected with
the myth of the lost Pleiad. When the baker came to the seventh stone, one of
the loaves would invariably fall off. Mr. liager informs mc that a peasant on
Salisbury Plain told him that no one could count the same number of stones there
twice. .'Ml this reminds us of the West African account of the lost Pleiad. " Why
do you call the Pleiades 'the Seven Stars'? Can you count seven ?" " No, Massa.
Yon count one, two, three, four, five, six, then todder one hide herself; no let
you count her."

The Micmacs to this day believe that it is wrong to count the Pleiades; and
an old Murcian woman, a half-breed Nana, said to ine, " I know a ({ood dc.il
about the Seven Cabrillas' (the Kids), but it is not lawful to talk about them."

But how and where does the Baker come in, and what possible connection has
he with the Pleiades ? Leiand's only reason, as we have seen, for suspecting such
a connection between them, is that the Gypsy believed that the two stories as to
the Seven Whistlers and the baker came from " the Scriptures." A most curiou«.
bit of hitherto unsuspected star-lore and tradition, however, lies at the bottom of
the connection of the baker with the Pleiades, stars that ate widely cuiiiiccled wiili
the gift of cereals, and also with a paradise in the West. The Greeks called thein
the Hesperides (Stars of the West). Hence their paradise, " the Garden of the Tles-
perides," was in the West. Everywhere among p'^imitive races the Pleiades are
believed to bring rain, and to be " stars of plenty." In Peru they were called " the
Granary" (Colica). In Borneo, an ancestor of the Dyaks brought down rice from
the Land of the Pleiades. In the Indian Archipelago we are told of Pulo Bua,
"the fruitful island in the West"; while in Polynesia, the Land of Makalii (a
name which means "the Pleiades"), was no doubt that western paradise from which
the god Tao brought to mortals the blessed gift of the breadfruit tree. Holi-Yava
is also a name in the Indian Archipelago for a western paradise; and Pomander
points out how widely throughout Polynesia that name (appearing also as
" Hawaii") was connected with a land of plenty and bliss in the West. Long ago.

(ivHSV i''()|.K-L(>KK AS TO StoNKIIUNGI'.. Ift

too. Max MiilUr. in hi* "Chip* from a German Workshop." poitiu.l (.ut (thoiiKlj
not in reference to this subject) how widely spread was the meaniiiK of " wheat"
altachc«l to Vova. Fie also mention* (but docs not explain why) that ' Yuvuna*'
it the iiaiiii' in Ilindostan for " West cm people."

It may be well liere to mention ili.it the Hebrews called ilie extrente west and
the " Isles of the Sea" Juvan. Why was Yava connected with the West ? I think
I have already supplied lui answer. As cereals can>c from tliv West, the names for
the West and for cereals became convertible terms. Saba (seven in Berber) means
also the Seven Stars, as well as the 'Seven Heavens." and "com." Nemendi, also
a Uerber name lor wlicai. |.u.lMbl> like ilic ICKyptian iiaiiic lor tln' abode oi the
Blessed. " Ameiiti." came from " Rmcnt " (the West).

But German folk-lore has something to s.ny on the subject ..f the Pleiades ami
llie Kift of cereals. Kelly, in his work on Indo-Kuropean Myths, tells us of a baker
who rudely refused to kIvc a loaf of bread to our Lord. The baker's wife and
dauKhter. however, hurried after Him with a present of several loaves, which was
accepted. As a reward for their charity, they were turned into the Pleiades, while
the churlish baker was changed into a cuckoo, who, as long as those stars are vis-
ililc. is heard calling to his wife and dauKhter. But there is some slight blunder in
Kelly's star-lore, for the Pleiades are invisible from the beginning of May for forty
days, the very time when the cuckoo is most often heard. We m.ay, therefore, read
the myth, " as long as he cannot see those stars in the sky. he is heard calling for
his wife and daughter."

According to a writer in " Globus." a very similar story is to be found among the

Dyaks. But is the cuckoo found so far south, :uul is May there the season for

spring ? For only then is the cuckoo heard. When summer cornes he tal a wing.

Bruce, in his famous ode, describes the cuckoo as following the spring around

the globe :

" Sweet bird, thy bower is ever bright.
Thy sky is ever clear ;
Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.

" Oh. could I fly, I'd fly with thee ;
We'd make, with joyous wing.
Our annual circuit of the globe,
Companions of the Spring."

PKIMITIVI-: ASTl^ONOMICAL TRADITIONS AS

TO PARADlSi:.

|l''r»iii rnxienilliiKS of Urlllah Ailoolalluii, iHMb. |

The autlior had nu-t witli a tirvm mass of priniitivt- It-m-iids aiiioiiK savaKi's as
to a iiriiiifval paratlisc, willi its Trii- of l-ifi- and of KiHiwIcdRf, boinK situated in the
stars of Taurus, tho Pleiades. As far l)aik as iH<).< hi' privately piiiilitl a papoi,
entitled " New Materials for the History of Man, derived from a iomparisoi> of
the Calendars and I'Vstivals of N;itions." In the i-onrse of these astroiioniiial
rescarehes, he had in-.-t, to his surprise, with eurions traditions as to a p:ira<lise
and deluKe, the cross, a tree or hon»;h, and a bird eoiinected with the iiriniitive
year and its festivals. He had sinee devoted much eareful study to this eiUKin.i,
and the present paper niwv only a portion of these invesliKati(nis, for the snhjeet
was to«) wide to he outlined in a paper. Half a lentury aRo many learned works
were <levoted to eoineideiues in the religious ideas, traditions aiul symbols i>f
nations ; and it was by some supposed that they were distorted vjstini's of the
sacred narrative, but this view had been al)andoned, and .ill these learned iiivcsti
nations had been <liscrctlited. We now cut the (iordiau knot, which we cannot
solve, as to these conunon traditions and beliefs, and stippose them to be of indite
nous growth. But, while this conclusion iniKht in many instances be rinht, there were
many coincidences too arbitr.iry ami widely spre.ul to a<lmit of the solution that
the beliefs and reliRious ideas of primitive races were all the eman.itions of dark-
ness, stagnation and decay. The author then selected some American traditions
as to the Tree of Life and Paradise. The symbols of a cross and a bough or tree,
he thought, were suggested by the form of the Pleiades, which when they set have
a remarkable resemblance to a prostrate tree. The Kiowas of the prairies believe
that in the shape of the IMeiades and of some adjoining stars can be seen the form
of their great Father in heaven, the great Kiowa. Once upon a time he went far
to the west and met with a prostrate tree or trunk, which he struck three times.
At the first stroke human beings of misshapen, monstrous forms came forth. These
he put to rights, placed them back in the tree and struck it a second time, when
perfect men and wc.nen came forth from this tree of life. Ife placed them again in
the tree, and struck it a third time, when men and women, and children that had
been born, came out of it. He instructed the men and women in the rude arts of
savage life, and then went up to the Pleiades. This belief in our having sprung
from a tree is well known in the Old World, in Britain, Lapland, Germany.
Greece, Persia and other countries. An Indian tribe of the Pampas, the Abipones,

«"»4)

1'KIMITIVE AsTRONOMICAI- TRAPITIONb AS TO I'arauisk.

Ii5

lu'Iiovc lliiit tlioir Kreat KatluT rcsidi's in the PIfiadcs, and wlioii tlu'sr stars
<lisa|)|)far from tin- licaviMis for a tiiiu-, it is lu-licvi-d tlial lu- dies or is ill, and wiion
thdsi- stars ri-appfar Ids revival is haili'd with joy. This xivcs a ilnc to the death
and revival o( the ^ods of antiijuity. These people nse the synd)ol of those " stars
of rain," the prehistoric eross. as an ornament or sacred si^n There is also a
enrions tradition of seven niant lirothers, who fishetl otT the west coast of Canada.
'They strnck a IniRe monster with a harpoon. .'\s the rope coidd not he loosened,
they weri' draRKcd far into the ocean towarils a vast whirlpool. Jnst as they
neared it the rope hroke, and they sailed np to the I'leiades, where they arc now
visihle as the seven stars. 'TiiC'.e seven hrothers wive lis a cine to the seven
C'aheiric hrothers, of Phoenician tradition, who sailed in the tirst ship, and who
have been identified with the Pleiades hy Movers. Ihit the story of tin- whirlpool
is especially important, for we meet il in the traditicnis of the Dyaks of Hnriieo,
some of the ,inceslors of whom, as they were sailing in a hoat, saw near a ureat
waterfall the hoiiKhs of a tree totichiiiK the waters, and loaded with fruit. A
Dyak climhed up the lice to sec where its roots ^rew. He toimd out the enigma,
which is described in the " Son^ of Odin." who liim« nine days Irom a mystic tree,
"of which iiv> one knows where its roots Kr<iw." 'The Dyak re.iched a heavenly
country, "the land of the Pleiades," where he was taiiKhl auricnltnre and olhi-r
arts liy a kind heiiiK who dwells there, and then, hrin^iiiK with him from the
Pleiades the ndl of rice or corn, he was let down hy a rope from the seven stars,
and imparted to his conntryiiicii the mystic lore which he h.id learned hy cliinhiiiK
that tree of knowledge. This walerf.ill recalls the waterfall of llu' Uiver Styx and
the whirlpool of the llaida tradition ; also the whirlpool of Scylla and Charyhdis,
over which hiniK a urcat (ik tree. A ^-reat niimher of int<'restin>f points were
adduced comiecliiiK liic primitive tra<lilioiis of the n.ilivcs of .America ,'ind Pidynesi.i
with those of the ( >1(1 World. 'The llnec (iiact's were, .inionK the Iroipiois, three
loviiiK sisters, the spirits of the lieaii, the sipiash and mai/e, their nifts to nnntals.
They are called " ( )iir l-ife, onr Supporters" the very words addressed to the
spirit of .inriciiltnic in Mexico, ,ind to this day in the .^llas country. 'The Lyciaii
W(Mnen of old invoked the hull to come and hrin^ the (ir.ices with him ; and the
hnll of (he Mysteries is reinesenled with the three (iraces <m its head, and the
I'leiades followiiiK them. 'This referred to the constellatitm Tanriis, or the hnll, in
which the Pleiades were placed. When " the hnll with its white horns opened the
year," il hroiiKht, all over the world, a kindly New N'ear's fe.ist of f.imily love.
I'.ven ainoiiR the hcad-hnntinn Dyaks of Borneo Rishop Chalmers was asked on
New Year's Day to ro out to the assemhled people and to ^ive them his wishes
for a happy New Year. In many parts of the world it is followed by visits, gifts
and good wishes. This is <nie of the oldest and most nnivers il of festivals.

INDIAN GHOSTS AND CONCH FEASTS.

(April 10, 1897.)

Had the natives of Jamaica any connection with the races of North or South
America ? This is a question which we cannot discuss in tlic limited state of
our knowledge of West Indian natives. This arises partly from the fact that the
cruel power that is now deluging Cuba with blood, succeeded in little more than
a century in exterminating the friendly and peaceable natives of the West Indies.

No page in the history of our race presents such a blank as that which refers
to those people. The Spaniards said that the natives reminded them of the people
of Majorca ; but that race was a small one, and no doubt an offshoot of the dwarf
stock that, according to Professor Sergi, migrated from North Africa to the islands,
and to the Northern shores of the Xlediterranean. The Spaniards probably referred
to the little Caribs. In the Atlas region of Morocco the dwarfs and their large off-
shoots are called " the littie Haritin " and " the large Haritin." When I first, in
1890, saw one of the latter, I said " that man must be a Carib." The dwarfs range
from 4 feet to 4 feet 10. Their larger kinsmen are from 4 feet 10 to 5 feet 4 inches,
and both have that peculiar, bright-reddish complexion, that so generally charac-
terizes dwarfs. My Berber servant (thanks to whom I became their discoverer)
said, " they have a red complexion, quite different from that of other races in
Morocco. It is like that of the red Indians of America." A recent color chart by a
German anthropologist makes the Tupi Guarani and most other races of South
America have the same tint as the Berbers. The fact that their names for spirits,
or ghosts, Cetnis, and Toiia, are to be met with in Central America, and as far
north as the Pueblos, leads us to suspect that the people of the islands, and of
Central America must have sprung from the same stock.

Brasseur de Bourbourg's idea that the Popul Vuh was historical, even though
he was backed up in it by Max Muller, he had to abandon in his old age. It was
a mythical work, containing astronomical legends that are as wide-spread as the
wanderings of our race. Within the past two years cave deposits and inscriptions
have been found in Yucatan, that lead to the idea that the Mayas, when they arrived
there, were already a semi-civilized people.

We must be patient, and must collect in properly managed museums all that

(Ii6)

Indian Ghosts and Concii Feasts. 127

can be gathered together as to the aborigines of the West Indies. In time this
great blank in anthropology will be filled up, but we now have tantalizing glimpses
of affinities, that serve only to stimulate and baffle our curiosity.

Shell moimds are to be found from the icy North to the Straits of Magellan.
At a suitable time of the year the Indians used to pic-nic for weeks on the seashore.
In New England they bequeathed their indigestible but tempting " clambake " to
the Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants : and their memory will bo preserved
green as long as " clam-chowder " endures.

On the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, where oysters took the place of the ven-
erated clam, there are many " shell-islands'' where there nrc enormous deposits of
oyster shells. I spent the winter of 1882-3 on one called Tiger-tail Island, where
that terrible Seminole Chief, Tiger-tall, was wont to roast and bake oysters, in place
of Yankees.

In the Caribbean Sea the conch took the place of the oyster. I chartered a
schooner in 1870 and explored the network of little islands and inlets in the British
and Foreign Leeward and Virgin Islands, which no one ever visits. As Pere Labat
speaks of heaps of shells left by the Caribs at Anegada, I thought I would take
a look at them. The island is surrounded by a network of coral reefs extending
ten miles to the seawaid, and but few strangers reach it except those that have
been washed ashore. I found the people there (about two hundred in number I
should think), much disturbed by my visit, and they refused at first to come with
me. But the next morning the whole population seemed to turn out to'ald me. I
afterwards learned that on my arrival they had held a meeting, at which it was
resolved that, as no man in his senses would think of opening a heap of old conch
shells, I must be in search of Captnin Kydd's treasure. They then generously re-
solved that I be permitted to open these mounds, but at my own expense ; and they
further resolved, that while they would help me to find the treasure, they would
never allow me to carry off a penny. Anxious to have a hand in the " find," they
flew upon the shell mounds like demons ; but I did not wish to pay all the people
of the island, and therefore selected three or four, who opened half a dozen shell
mounds, watched with intense anxiety by the rest of the people. We found only
.shells and ashes, nothing of interest, and, sad to say, no vestige of Captain Kydd
and his hoards.

I encouraged that idea about Captain Kydd by looking very mysterious, con-
sulting my notebook, pacing off the distance between certain objects, and behaving
generally like a truant land-surveyor. My benevolent object was, I subsequently
learned, most fully accomplished, for the people there are now the highest living
authorities on the subject of Carib shell mounds. For a fortnight after I left, the
whole population turned out, and overhauled all the numerous shell mounds in the

128 Indian Ghosts and Conch Feasts.

island ; but, unfortunately, they found nothing. They then concluded that I had
inherited some invaluable notebooks and maps from my worthy ancestor, Captain
Kydd, and that I had slipped ashore in the night, and had carried off millions
of " pieces of eight" and " Spanish . os."

A friend, Chief Justice Semper of St. Kitts, warned me never to venture near
that island again, and I have taken his advice. It was the cheapest bit of archaeo-
logies exploration on record.

This fish diet must have greatly contributed to the vitality and vigor of the
Indians. The prevalent idea that fish is so little nutritious that to dine on fish is
equivalent to fasting, was a little shaken by the fact, that communities that live on
fish are very prolific. A gentleman, whom I met recently at the Toronto Club, and
who had spent some winters at Hudson's Bay, told me that it was a favorite amuse-
ment there to pit the fish-eating against the flesh-eatmg Indians in trials of strength,
and that in every case the former came off victorious.

Bishop Hanna was right in his conjecture, that aboriginal remains would proba-
bly be found, if sought for, in Pedro, Jamaica. The contents of the caves there are
well-known, although it is possible that treasure-seekers, or even antiquaries, may
a century or two ago have; carried away or destroyed much in them that would have
been of interest. On the top of a hill at Malvern Chase, it was said, when I was
there eleven years ago, that there was an Indian burial place. I employed a couple
of men for one or two days in opening some places that seemed promising, but
the results were on the whole disappointing. On digging down in some places
there, we found an almost solid mass of little shells, about two inches thick, in a
regular layer. But we found no skeletons or human bones, although we came across
a large quantity of broken pottery, which seemed to have been an offering to the
dead, for when an article is broken, it belongs to the spirits. On Haugmena night,
New Year's Eve (for " Haug " means a " ghost," and the spirits then pay the earth
a visit, as they do also at Hallow-eve, and the Eve of May-Day), it is a custom
among Highlanders to drink a toast, and then to thiow the wine-glasses over the
left shoulder, no doubt once a mode of making an offering to ancestral ghosts.
The Maori used to always offer a grace to ancestors by throwing a little food over
the left shoulder. On spilling salt, many people, to avert ill-luck, throw salt over
the left shoulder. All this dates back to an era when our ancestors were some-
what like the old aborigines at Pedro.

The ashes and a few bones were quite consistent with funeral, or memorial
feasts. There were indications that the place had been opened before, and it is
possible that skeletons may have been carried away.

The pottery we found was of singular interest. There were some dishes about
six inches long, very shallow and graceful in shape, with handles formed of frogs'

Indian Ghosts and Conch Feasts. 129

lieads most artistically executed. I have not seen anything of the sort to equal
them in the Peabody Museum collection from Central America.

The frog was the symbol of rain and of the rain-god in Mexico and in Central
America. The pottery was evidently intended to be hung up, as it was pierced, or
had handles for that purpose, like Guanche pottery. The Gypsies, who, like the
Berber tribes on the coast opposite the Canaries, hang up their drinking cups, believe
that if they are allowed to touch the ground they are thereby consecrated to the
dead, and must be broken in pieces.

Before I dismiss the subject of destioying articles as a mode of offering them
to spirits, I may mention a singular custom of the Spanish Gypsies, who at a cer-
tain feast collect many bushels of confections made (if I remember right) of white
powdered sugar. These are thrown on the floor of the dancing room, until it is
covered with a layer two or three inches deep. Of course the cost of this pro-
ceeding is a very heavy one. The Gypsies then, men and women, commence a
weird, frenzied dance, in which they work themselves up into a delirium and then
sink down exhausted. The sugar clogs their feet, and covers their legs and
garments, and when they cease dancing, they present a most singular and sorry
picture.

Though archaeologists cannot conjecture the origin of this custom, we may
form a shrewd guess as to what this dance means. The ghosts are in for a big
candy frolic, and the sweetmeats must be destroyed before the spirits can own the-n.
The rationale of these ideas is. I think, capable of a very simple explanation. With
primitive races of men everything in nature has its spiritual double. The soul of
the hunter's dog goes to the Land of the Blessed and hunts game there for his master,
just as he did on earth ; and the warrior fights, loves, and feasts as heartily as he
did when in the flesh, (i)

In the Peabody Museum of Anthropology there is to be seen half a bushel of
pearls, some of large size, that have been subjected to the action of fire. They
have not been destroyed ; they have only been translated to the necks and arms '|

of tawny warriors. Who knows that the only pale-faced ghost, that of the late
George Washington, that ever found its way into the Red Man's Paradise, may

not have often seen and admired them ? t

All this serves to explain the meaning of the Mysteries, or initiations of pre- |

historic man, and of antiquity. With Christians admission to the society of the

(0 Maspero In " The Struggle of the Nations," a translation of which has just been published by Appleton
& Co. (N. Y., 1897), since the above paper was read, says (p. 523) of the mummies of pets of the deceased placed
in Egyptian tombs, " A few of the principal objects were broken or damaged, In the belief that by thus
destroying them their double would go forth and accompany the human double, and render him their accustomed
service during the whole of his posthumous existence."

This is a singular confirmation of my conjecture, and shows bow much of prehistoric man survived In
the Egyptian.

130 Indian Ghosts and Conch Feasts.

blessed must be obtained through the Atonement. With primitive man this was
accomplished by initiation. To become a blessed spirit, a man must die. Hence
" the death of the Mysteries," or " Cabeiric death," which was brought about by
exhausting ordeals, long fastings, and the use of narcotics, under the effect of which
the aspirant lost consciousness, and fell into a death-like trance. He was then
buried and resurrected, but he returned a blessed spirit. An American Indian who
has been initiated indulges in the boast, " I am a spirit." Death thenceforth has no
spiritual terrors for him (2).

This was the Egyptian belief. The deceased worshipper of Osiris, who had
been initiated into "the Mysteries oflsis," himself became an Osiris, and, as a
" Blessed Osirian," reigned with the gods. These ideas can be detected in the
Apocalypse, a work permeated by the astronomical imagery, the symbolism of
numbers, and the allegorical spirit of the venerable Mysteries. Read by the light
of primitive cults, the following significant passage becomes a little more intelli-
gible than it has hitherto seemed.

" Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the
second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall
reign with Him a thousand years " (Rev. 20 : 6).

In 1888 I mentioned to Professor Maspero verbally, and afterwards by letter,
that the "Osirian cult " still existed in America. Osiris is the Greek form of Haesari
in Egyptian, which in Phoenician and in the traditions of southern Morocco and
the western Soudan is Isiri. Among the Caribs and the Abipones of South
America the name is Hoscheiri, or Ischeiri, and the initiated becomes an Ischeiri
after death.

I shall hereafter bring out these points in a paper on '" Vestiges of the Osirian
Cult in the New World."

(2} The iollnwing passage, from Mr. Lyman Abbott's article in The Outlook (Mar. 1897), is applicable to the
belief of prehistoric man: "What is God's way of doing things according to evolution? It is to develop life by
successive processes, until a spirit akin to His appears in a bodily organism, akin to that of the lower animals
from which it had been previously evolved. This bodily organism is from birth in a constant state of decay and
repair. At length the time comes when, through disease or old age, the repair no longer keeps pace with the
decay. Then the body returns to the earth, and the spirit to God who gave it. . . . But every death is a
resurrection of the spirit. What we call death, the New Testament calls ' an exodus,' or an emancipation from
bondage, an ' unmooring,' or setting the ship free from its imprisonment. The spirit is released from Its confine-
ment, and the release is death. Death is, in short, not a cessation of existence, not a break in existence : It is
simply what Socrates declared It to be, ' the separation of the soul and body ; and being dead Is the attainment
of this. When the soul exists in Itself, and is parted from the body, and the body is parted from the soul, that
it death.' " {Tht Phaedo, Jowett's Trans.)

THE DAYS OF REST OF PREHISTORIC MAN/"

[From Tlie Canadian Magarlne, October, i8g7.J

On those three ill-omened days of rest of prehistoric man. which were connected
w.th the dead, and •' stained with tlie shadow of death," no work cm,ld be done and
prosper. They were i.itensifications of the sailor's Friday. Why those monthly Sab-
baths were connected nearly all the world over with the number, three, it is difficult
to conjecture. The Peruvians, and probably other races, believed that the moon every
."onth died for three days and rose again ; but if this suggested the number, three
we should expect the days of the dead to occur then, whereas they were generally
held at the beginning, instead of at the end of " the dark half of the moon " Hence
the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth days of the moon were nearly every-
where regarded as unlucky.

How singularly the number three is connected with mourning and " days of the
dead" W.11 be apparent fro„, the followi.ig paragraphs, to the language of which I
specially invite attention :

" Have they any belief in the immortality of the soul ? To this I cannot reply
with certainty. But what is the meaning of the tears and lamentations of the poor
mother, who for three days and three nights lies stretched on the grave of her little
son, callmg him by his name, and repeating in broken sobs. 'Oh. come back be-
loved one come back to thy mother !' ' It is not for thee to hear her greetings until
she has freed herself from her consecration to the gods below, and the third day
arrives.' "

This reads as if it were continuous, and referred to some one person Yet the
interval in time and space indicated by the first part and the last suggests an abyss
of t.me of perhaps scores of thousands of years, and a distance in space equal to
that of half the circuit of the globe. The first part is a quotation from D'AI-
bert.s' description in his " New Guinea " (Vol. i. p. 143) of a Papuan mother's mourn-
ing for her son. while the last part is a quotation from the Alcestis of Euripides
(line 1 138, Trans. Simpkin and IVfarshall, 1881).

graph of 1863 on "The Festival o The dLh" m! » very few copies of my privately-printed mono-
Tradifon, w?th the .^ei^^'t^ ^l^t ^^'^ Z.fT^C.Z': ^:,T''''' " "°''-'^' '""-'

('30

13* The Days of Rest op Prehistoric Man.

The author of " Five Years in the West Indies" gives a curious negro super-
stition about the three days of the dead. "'We go dead one day; next day we
shiver in de cofHn, and de next day we go dead again till all things come quite
down.' I need hardly say I endeavoured to remove this belief, but I found it to
be an almost universal opinion among the negroes."

Among that primitive race, the Nagas of India, we meet with these three days
of the dead. Godden, in his " Naga and other Frontier Tribes " (Journ. Anthrop.
Inst. No. 90, 1896, p. 190), says : " The old accounts of funeral rites evidently refer
to a ' death genna,' where it is stated that after the death of a man of any standing,
none of the inhabitants of a village quitted it for three days; and that for three or
four days after a death the relatives do not leave the village, neither do the other
villagers resort to a village in which a death has occurred during that period "
(Ibid. 171).

In the valuable report on the Aborigines by a Committee of the Legislative
Council of Victoria (Session 1858-9), we find Mr. Hull states respecting the natives :
" Their grand corroborees are held only in the spring when the Pleiades are most
distinct; and their corroboree is i worship of the Pi nades as a constellation which
announces spring. Their monthly corroboree is in honour of the moon " (p. 9). C.
J. Tyres, also says : " They sing and dance to gain the favour of the Pleiades (Mor-
modellick), the constellation worshipped by one body as the giver of rain." I need
hardly add that the southern spring is about November. In my " Festival of the
Dead," (i) I state, "We are told that 'all the corroborees of the natives are con-
nected with a worship of the dead, and last three days.' In confirmation of this a
member of the Nova Scotian Institute of Natural Science, who had been at these
annual corroborees, tells me that, as the natives for these occasions paint a white
stripe on their arms, legs and ribs, they appear, as they dance by their fires at night,
like so many skeletons rejoicing."

We are told by another person who was examined by the committee, that at
all the corroborees the natives " make offerings to the dead, when after three days
of continued dancing their bodies are cleared from all appearance of mourning,
and there i» rejoicing in its stead."

Substantially the same calendar is found among the Polynesians who divide
their year into two seasons. The one is " the Pleiades above," and the other, " the
Pleiades below." The Australian mode of watching the time when the Pleiades
are to be seen all night long is a little more accurate than the division of the year
by the Polynesians into the two seasons of the Pleiades, and is a perfect calendar
for primitive races, which regulates time by the aid of moons, instead of months,
the beginning of the year being at the full moon, which is nearest to the time when

(I) Hallburton,'"The Festival of the Dead," 1863, p. 10.

The Days of Rest of Prehistoric Man. 133

the Pleiades are overhead at nu<lnight, i.e., in November. Where we find clear traces
of early Negrito or Nigrillo influences, there we meet with distinct vestiges of the
year of the Pleiades, and of the three " Days of Dead." As there are fewer indi-
cations of a primitive dwarf population having existed north of the Rio Grande
than elsewhere, we hear but little among northern tribes of the Pleiades and of
Days of the Dead. One Indian tribe in British Columbia, however, for three days
commemorates the dead in November.

Among the Polynesians and the Papuans nearly all festivals are of three nights'
duration, and funereal. Ellis tells us that the Society Islanders regard the seven-
teenth, eighteenth and nineteenth nights of the moon as seasons " when spirits wan-
der more than at any other time."

Nearly everywhere we find traces of these ideas, but especially as respects the
seventeenth day of the moon. Bishop Chalmers says of the Dyaks of Borneo,
" During the farming season, the day after the full moon, and the third day after
it are ' Pamali' and no farm work can be done."

In India these three unlucky days of the moon can be traced, and are called
Dagda ('■ stained" or " burned" by death). Dubois speaks of a festival " called by the
Hindoos 'Mahanavami,' which is devoted principally to the hbnour of deceased
ancestors. It is celebrated in the month of October during a period of three days;
and is so religiously kept that it has become a proverbial saying that those who
have not the means of celebrating it should sell one of their children to procure
them." Sir Wm. Jones says that the Hindoos in every lunar month, on Mahacala,
make " offerings to the manes of the Pitris, or certain progenitors of the human
race, to whom the darker fortnight is peculiarly sacred " (Vol. iv., p. 129). He also
says, referring to a Hindoo work, " Many subtle points are discussed by my author
concerning the junction of two, or even three lunar days in forming one fast or
festival." The three days of the dead, the " Dewali (the spirits), are observed in
northern and western India almost simultaneously with those fossil survivals in our
calendar, Oct. 31st, Nov. ist and 2nd — All Hallowe'en, All Saints and All Souls. The
English peasant still goes " a-souling""on All Souls' Day, praying from house to house
for " a soul cake for all Christian souls," while the Hindoo is offering his funeral
cake to the manes of deceased ancestors. A Hindoo often adopts a boy as a son
when he is childless so that he may have some one surviving him, who will an-
nually offer him a funeral cake when he is no more.

Even when primitive races tried to advance a step beyond their rude star-lore
into astronomy, and divided the year into 360 days, and the month into 30 days,
inventing a week of five days, six of which made a month, and seventy-two a year,
they still retained the three days' corroboree at the end of the year, though in a fossil
state. It was necessary to add five days in order to make up the 365 days, but

ij^ The Days of Rbst of Prehistoric Man.

these were not included in the days of the year, but constituted a month of five
dayi, which, however, was not counted. They were ili-onu-ne<l. and tlie ttiird day
was specially connected with the dead, as well as the two days following it.

Don Juan Fio Perez, of Yucatan, speaking of the Yucatan calendar, says : " Five
supplementary days were added at the end of each year, which made part of no
month, and which, therefore, they called ' days without name.' They called them
alto ' Yuab.' or ' Yuab Jaab." The word Yuab may be derived from Yua, which
means to be destroyed, wounded, corroded by the caustic juice of plants, or with
ley. or other strong liquids (i.e., ' stained with death '). On this account." he
adds, • the Indians feared those days, believing them to be unfortunate, and to
carry danger of sudden death, plague and other misfortunes. For this reason these
five days were assigned for the festival of the god Mam (the grandfather)."

The feast of the dead is indicated by the first of the three last days being
called Cemis (spirits of the dead).

The name Typhon (the principle of evil) was by the Egyptians applied to
this day in their calendar, and it was looked on as an evil day, " for which reason."
says Plutarch. " the kings of Egypt would transact no public business on it, nor
even attend to the care of their persons on that day."

Before the great festival, about November in Samoa, a herald walked through
the villages announcing, " Thou shall not work ; thou shalt rest, doing no work."
Everyone not taking part in the procession or sacred rites, had to remain within
doors, or death was the penalty.

Admiral Erskine refers to this Sabbath, which continues throughout the month
of November in Fiji. " There is a month in the year, about November, in which
the god comes from Bulu, the world of spirits, to make the bread fruit, and other
fiuit trees blossom and yield fruit. He seems to be a god of peace, and cannot
endure any noise or disturbance, and his feelings in this respect are most
scrupulously regarded by the natives. They, therefore, live very quietly during
this month, it being tapu to go to war, or to sail about, or plant, or build houses,
or do most kinds of work, lest Ratumaimbulu should be offended and depart again
to Bulu, leaving his important work unfinished." (" Islands of the Western Pacific."

P- 244-)

The Persians preserved traces oT the monthly corroboree, for in each month
there were three ill-omened days. The 17th day of the month of Murdad (No-
vember in their ancient calendar), on which the angel of agriculture and death
(Murdad) came up to earth, was peculiarly unlucky, and no work could be done
on it. and rulers could not refuse any favours asked of them then.

At that time, in Rome, Pluto, the god of agriculture and death, also came up
to earth, and that period was " stained with the shadow of death," for no work
could be done then, no war declared.

The Days ov Rust op Prbhistokic Man. 135

The Romans regarded day;) uf the dead as ntfasti, and the Greeks looked un
them as " stained," or " ill-omened. "

That the God of Kain visited the earth in November we have living testimony
probably ten times as old as the oldest Uabyloniari monuments discovered lately
at Nippur. Those venerable survivals from a primordial Negrito race, the isolated
pygmies of the Andaman Islands in the Uay of Bengal, have a deity like Pluto
and the god from Puloto of western Polynesia, who is called Puluga. Pul, Bui. Bel,
Pulo, I'luh, arc names signifying " rain," and remind us of the word " pool" in
English. Up to the time of the buiTding of the Temple the Hebrews called No-
vember the month of Bui (or " rain"). The deluge is called Mabul (" the great
rain"). Dr. MofTatt says that in Hechuanaland the dead send rain, and the only
prayer over the dead is the mournful wail, pulo I pulo I (rain t rain !) If the rain
<loes not come, the recently buried corpses are reinterred in a new place, in hopes
that it may be acceptable. Pluh is the heaven of the Karens, and both Pluto and
Puluga evidently mean " the God of Rain." The latter, who thunders, and sends
riin, and judges the spirits of the dead, dwells in a great stone mansion in the
sky. He eats and drinks a great deal, for in the rainy season he comes to gather
food, being especially fond of certain fruits, and roots and seeds. To touch any
of these during the first half of the rainy season (November) would so ent;age
Puluga that he would again destroy the world by water. This is no doubt the
earliest history of the sanctity of " first fruits."

Those three ill-omened nights (not of the month, but of the moon), the 17th.
18th and igth, survive in fossil form in ancient calendars. The Attic Anthesteria,
and the Roman Feralia (both funereal in character), were held on the 17th, 1 8th and
19th of February. On the 17th, i8th and 19th days of Athyr (November) the great
feast of I sis took place, a festival of grief, which Plutarch says was held " when the
Pleiades were most distinctly visible "; and he also says that the 17th, i8th and 19th
days of every month were unlucky.

But the most striking of the survivals of this primeval feast is found in the
Eleusinian Mysteries. Ancient Greek authorities assert that, " It was the Pleiades
who taught the sacred dances, and the nightly festival days " (Pannychida, i.e., held
all night long). At the Eleusinia, the most venerable of the Greek Mysteries, the
three most sacred and mysterious days were the three Pannychida, which were
observed all night long, and were connected with the dead.

That oiTerings to the dead were made on the five intercalary days, is shown by the
monuments (see Bunsen's "Egypt," iii., 63, 70. Leipsius Ein, 91, 92). The Hindoos
have a fable as to the gods playing at dice in November (Sir Wm. Jones' Works,
iv. 113). The same myth is preserved by the Berbers of the western Soudan. In
my journal, January, 1882, I Bnd the following entry as respects Hamed ben

tyS Thb Days of Rkst oh Prfhistoric Man

Mahtmuned. a native o( Ma*hana«. in the Sahara, six day* farther than Su«.
" I lamed here inninted on telling me a «tory about some old women, seated on a
carpet, playinK at dice, and winning five days from the moon."

The followinK passaRe from my " Festival of the Dead" will be of intcrert:
" It is not a little remarkable that to a curse similar to that which the
Patriarch Job uttered against the day of his birth, the Egyptians attributed the
very origin of these five unlucky days. Plutarch tells us (de Is. et Os. c. la):
'The Sun. enraged at Chronos (Saturn, Time, or the Year), and Rhea (the
starry heaven), for having begotten the five planets, for whom there was no
space in the year or in the heavens, uttered a curse, that they should neither be
born in a month nor in the year. Therefore, Hermes, as a return to Rhea for
past favors, played at dice with the moon, and won back the 72nd part of
each day of the year of 360 days, i.e., 5 days, which, thenceforth, constituted
those five cpagomanae, or " days without name," which neither formed a part
of the months nor of the year'

" To show how striking is the identity between the imprecation that forms
the basis of this myth, and that of Job against the day of his birth, let us imagine
the Sun using the very words of the Patriarch to curse those ill-omened birth
days of the planets: ' Let the days perish wherein they are born.' ' Let darkness
and the •shadow of death stain them.' ' Let them not be joined unto the days of
the year. Let them not come into the number of the months.' "

THE HALLOWEVE OF THE PREHISTORIC SABBATH.

" The evening and the morning were the first day," for the primitive day began
not at sunrise or sunset, but with the first signs of star light. Wherever we meet
with a festival preceded by a vigil or commencing at nightfall, we can safely assume
that it dates back to prehistoric times. So widely spread are the vestiges of this
primitive cycle of night and day that a learned Oxford writer, Greswell (Fasti
Catholici I., 219), says :

" The matter of fact, then, which enquiry into the rule of reckoning the cycle
of day and night in all quarters of the globe and at all periods of human history
brings to light, being everywhere the same, the conclusion deducible from it rests
on the broad basis of an almost universal k..duction, viz., that there must have been
from the first a simple and universal rule of this kind, everywhere observed, a rule
coeval with the origin of time itself, and as widely extended as the compass of the
habitable globe, a rule from which every other is to be derived. , . . none having
existed from the first, and none having been universal but this."

The Days of Kbst of 1'rkhistukic Man. 137

Thrriunlimit the Pacific Islandi (e«tival» begin at twiliKht. and generally lait
three (liiys ; and we tind traces of tliiit system in Africa, Asia and Europe. No
night was so nacred in I^gypt as that which preceded the great feast of Isis in
Novcnihcr. Apuleius makes Isis say. "The day that begins with (is born of)
that night, eternal religion has c.)nsecratcd to mc." (Mctam. 11., J57 ; also v. Athyr
in Volmer's IVorterbuch der Afylhologie.)

Though the Persians at a remote date changed the beginning of the year from
November to F'\'bruary. the ancient New Year's day still survived. It is called by
some writers " the Nouruz of the Magi." becaus. the Magi still adhered to it. It
began in the evening with a halloweve which, we are told, was peculiarly sacred
(Hyde, Dc Religionc lelerum I'ersarun, pp. 3J7, 238. 249), and was called by the
name (>hrisla/>h.

In the old Persian calendar, in its three unlucky days every month we have
traces of the monthly corroi)orce.

Kverywherc at an autumnal festival bonfires were lighted, as they still arc in
nritain. Its connection with spirits of the dead is shown by the rustic divinations
and superstitions of the Scotch, while in parts of Ireland a table with food on it
is left for the spirits of the dead, who are allowed to visit their old homes on that
night. The family, having opened the doors or windows, retire to rest early, and
leave the house in the possession of its former owners.

The names of the next two days. All Saints' and All Souls', tell their own
tale. The Italians call them " the days of the dead."

THE MOSAIC SARBATH.

When prehistoric man attempted to divide the years into days, weeks, and
months, and took a first and a long step in advance by exchanging his simple star-
lore for the first beginnings of astronomy, he entered upon a stage of develop-
ment that is beyond the scope of my paper. A few words, therefore, on the origin
of the week must suffice.

We find that the earliest and most widely spread form of the week was that
of five days (i) which is still in existence in parts of Asia and Indonesia, and was
found in Mexico and Central America by the Spaniards. The week of seven days,
which was much later, no doubt, dates back before the days of Moses, who, in
dealing with the calendar, pursued the same prudent course which was in later
ages resorted to by the early Christians, who adopted the feasts of the heathen

(I) In some few Instances the month w» divided into ten weeks of three days eaeh; and sometloies
thouRh rarely, into three division.* of ten days each. someiimes.

138 The Days of Rest of Prehistoric Man.

gods, substituting Christian saints for those divinities. They could not prevent
tliese feasts being observed, so they gave them a new raison d'etre, and divested
them of their heathen cliaractcr. But with the vigils or nightly feasts they would
have nothing to do. These were so thoroughly saturated with superstitions con-
nected with the spirits of the dead and ancestor worship that they were not al-
lowed a place in the calendars of Christendom. Hence, we do not see in them
All Halloweve, the Eve of Saint John, or the Eve of May Day; but they are still
preserved by the people, survivals of the nightly corroborees of a prehistoric past.

Moses was met as a reformer by the same problem. On all hands, even among
the highly civilized Egyptians, he found the worship of the spirits of the dead,
with its attendant necromancy, magic, divination, all forms of superstitions. Fie,
therefore, gave up the old nightly festivals, and made one day in seven a " Day
of Rest," connecting it with the seven days of creation; though another explana-
tion calls it a memorial of the passage of the children of Israel through the Red
Sea.

The Hebrew Scriptures are a marvel in one, and a very important respect.
While dead, and even living men were worshipped in early times, there is no
vestige in the Scriptures of hero worship, or of any toleration of the idea of
human perfectibility. The greatest characters depicted are true to nature, and
have their shady side; from first to last there is not the slightest suggestion .'
adoring or consulting the dead, except in the scene at Endor, the results of which
were not encouraging to any one inclined to try such an experiment.

Well was it that the burial place of Moses was a secret; had it been otherwise
there would have been pilgrimages to his tomb, and he would have been wor-
shipped as a saint, and ultimately, no doubt, as a God.

To judge of the superstitious material that he had to deal with we may per-
haps find an example among existing Barbary Jews, a race that claims that they
date back long before the days o' i\;oses. They reverence the Cabalistic Zohar
more than the Pentateuch, and say .-'. they know of the first temple of Solomon
which is in North Africa, but that they never heard of the second temple. Though
the Alexandrian Jews hated the Libyan Jews, Josephus admits that there was a
temple of Solomon in Libya, and that it was built before the destruction of the
first temple; but he accounts for it by a foolish story about nephew of a High
Priest, called Onias, who went to Libya and built it. As it now appears that the
Palestine Exploration Fund have found no traces of the first temple in Jerusalem,
it is interesting to know that Procopius saw the Libyan temple during the time of
the Vandal invasion, and says that the Libyan Jews claimed that it was the original
temple of Solomon.

The Barbary Jews are very superstitious, and look down on other Jews as

The Days of Rest of Prehistoric Man. 139

heretics. In many respects they seem to have traces of an early Cabeiric cuU.
With them, too. the Sabbath is a " Day of the Dead." I have spent mucli time
in that country, and have devoted much attention to these people, and their pe-
culiar festivals. I was surprised at finding that when an old woman, whose family
I knew very well, died, they almost seemed to worship her. and I felt sure that
their intense mourning was rather the efTcct of fear than of affection. For eight
days after her death no one in her family could cook or work. It is a custom
in that country, in case of n death having occurred during a year past, to pre-
pare on Friday for a visit on the Sabbath from the spirit of the deceased, which
gets out of Gehenna on a ticket-of-leave which expires at the end of the Sabbath.
After sunset the sitting-room is clean swept and prepared, and in a corner they
place a lamp with some flowers and other articles. It is believed that the spirit
will go there and remain till the close of the Sabbath, provided that it is not driven
fiway by noise or work; for the Sabbath nuist be a day of rest, and there must be
no noise, or work carried on, and, above all things, there must be no fire kindled
or extinguished, otherwise the poor ghost must hurry back to Gehenna. Hence
I could not get the servant, a Barbary Jewess, to light my lamp, or to kindle n.y
fire until on the Sabbath night the necessary four stars put in an appearance. On
one occasion she became annoyed at something, and. forgetting that it was the
eve of the Sabbath, brought in the lamp. I was sorry that I told her of her mis-
take, for she was very nnich distressed, and for days did not seem to be able to
forget her sin against her poor mother.

If a Jew's house catches fire on the Sabbath, he will not put it out, but he
straightway rushes into the street, shouting " My house is on fire !" and the Moors
take up the cry. " A Jew's house on fire: come and put it out !" Not that the
Moors care for the house being burned, but a fire is apt to spread, so the Moors
are accustomed, as a matter of course, to come to the rescue.

For a year the spirit of the dead spends its Sabbaths in its former home. At
the end of that time its lamp is placed in the synagogue, and is regularly supplietl
with oil. Where the family of the deceased is very poor, the synagogue supplies
the oil.

These ideas are not confined to Barbary Jews. An interesting article on the
superstitions of some Jews of eastern Europe appeared some years ago in The
Spectator (London), which gave a story that passed muster among them. A
Rabbi, an elotiuent man, was preaching in the synagogue, when he found the air
become very close, although the congregation was not very large. Suddenly the
gift of sight came to him. and he beheld scores of the spirits of the dead, many
of them well known to him, who crowded the synagogue to such an extent that
it was almost impossible to breathe. They had been allowed to come to earth on
the Sabbath Day I

140 The Connection of November Flood Traditions

The subjects of Moses, the Hebrew Sabbath, and the religious obligation on
Christians to observe Sunday are outside the scope of a paper on prehistoric
man; but in view of the use of electric cars on Sunday having been a "burning
question" at the polls in some of the principal towns in Canada, I may venture
to state that, in my opinion, so important is it to have one day of rest in seven,
that the State may be justified in making the observance of such a day a matter
of legislation. It would, however, be wise to punish a breach of a law regulating
the observance of Sunday as an oflfcnce not against God, but against the State.

THE CONNECTION OF NOVEMBER FLOOD
TRADITIONS WITH THE PLEIADES.

Nothing is clearer than that the Aztecs associated tlie time of the midnight cul-
mination of the Pleiades with a dread of the destruction of the world. Prescott
never wrote anything more striking and graphic than his account of the great
secular festival of the Aztecs, none of which can be omitted here.

" I shall conclude^" he says (Book I., chap. IV.), " the accourrt of Mexican science
with that of a remarkable festival celebrated at the termination of the great cycle of
fifty-two years. We have seen in the preceding chapter their description of the
destruction of the world at four successive epochs. They looked forward confidently
to another such catastrophe to take place, like the preceding, at the close of a cycle,
when the sun was to be effaced from the heavens and the human race from the
earth, and when the darkness of chaos was to settle on the habitable globe . . .
and on the arrival of the five ' unlucky ' days that closed the year they abandoned
themselves to despair. They broke in pieces the little images of their household
gods, in whom they no longer trusted. The holy fires were allowed to go out in
the temples, and none were lighted in their houses. Their furniture and their
domestic utensils were destroyed, their garments rent in pieces, and everything
was thrown into disorder for the coming of the evil genii, who were doomed to
descend on the desolate earth.

" On the evening of the last day a procession of priests, assuming the dress
and ornaments of the gods, moved from the capital towards a lofty mountain about
two leagues distant. They carried with them a noble victim, the flower of their
captives, and an apparatus for kindling the new fire, the success of which was an

WITH THE Pleiades. j^i

augury of the renewal of the cycle. On reaching the summit of the mountain the
procession paused till midnight, when, as the Pleiades approached the zenith,
the new fire was kindled by the friction of the sticks placed on the wounded breast
of the victim. The flame was soon communicated to a funeral pile, on whicii the
body of the slaughtered captive was thrown. As the light streamed up towards
heaven, shouts of joy and triumph burst forth from the countless multitudes who
covered the hills, the terraces of the temples and the housetops, with eyes anxiously
bent on the mount of sacrifice. Couriers, with torches lighted at the blazing beacon,
rapidly bore them over every part of the country, and the cheering element was
seen brightening on altar and hearthstone for the circuit of many a league long
before the sun, rising on his accustomed track, gave assurance that a new cycle
had commenced its march, and that the laws of nature were not to be reversed for
the Aztecs. The following thirteen days were given up to festivity. The houses
were cleansed and whitened ; the broken vessels were replaced by new ones ;
the people dressed in their gayest apparel, and crowned With garlands and chaplets
of flowers, thronged in joyous procession to offer up their oblations and thanks-
giving in the temples. Dances and games were instituted emblematical of the
regeneration of the world. It was the carnival of the Aztecs, or rather the national
jubilee ; the great secular festival, like that of the Romans and ancient Etruscans,
which few alive had witnessed before, or could expect to see again."

In a note to the words " as the Pleiades approached the zenith " (the meridian ?),
Prcscott adds : " At the actual moment of their culmination, according to both
Sahagun and Torquemada. But this could not be," he add.s, "as this took place
in November as late as the great secular festival whicli was early in Montezuma's
reign, in 1507." (See " Humboldt's View of the Cordilleras," pp. 181, 182.)

Humboldt, puzzled by the secular festival taking place in November, while the
Mexican year began in February, dropped the subject, alleging that there must
have been some blunder on the part of the Spanish authorities on the point. But
had he taken a little more trouble and inquired more fully into the subject, he
would have discovered that he had before him vestiges of a primitive calendar
regulated by those stars. His apparent difficulty was really imaginary. The same
sort of thing was to be found in the Egyptian calendar, in which, though the or-
dinary year began near the end of August, the cyclical year began on the 17th
day of Athyr (November).

A learned Oxford writer on the Calendar was much puzzled by the connection
of the Pleiades with the great Aztec secular festival :

"IVe recommend this point to the notice of astronomers. The fact is certain that
the culmination of this particular constellation was one of the phenomena presented
by the heavens to which the Aztecs in particular, for some reason or other, looked

r49 The Connection of November Flood Traditions

with peculiar interest and attached sfccial importance. It was attached to the cere-
mony of the secular fire, and apparently from the first ; the moment prescribed
for the stated sacrifice, followed by the rekindling of the extiiignished fires . . .
being precisely that when the Pleiades were in the middle of the sky." (See
Greswell's " Fasti Catholici," i. 362.)

Most Australian savages can solve this enigma very easily, for in November,
all the world over, those stars are visible all night long, the time when the annual
corroboree of the Pleiades is held, a rude feast lasting three nights, which it has
been shown by me survived in the great mournful anniversaries held by the
Egyptians, Greeks, Persians, and other nations.

Prescott is evidently mistaken in supposing that only once in fifty-two years
the new fire was kindled by the Aztecs. Their calendar, to a large extent, survives
in fliat of the Pueblo Indians, who kindle the new fire at the end of every period
of four years, two such periods making an eight-year period. This problem, when
looked into, will be found to be so simple that even the lowest type of savage can
master it if he can count four, and especially if he can count eight.

After an annual feast is held in honor of those stars, at the time of the full
moon of November — i.e., when they are visible all night — it is found that thence-
forward in subsequent years the moon ceases to mark the night of the annual
festival ; but after four years have elapsed it is discovered that the Pleiades cul-
minate at midnight on the night of the new moon of November; and after another
period of four years— i.e., after a period of eight years in all— it is found that on the
night of this feast the full moon and the Pleiades once more rise together in the
evening, culminate together at midnight, and set together at early morning, or
are visible together all night long.

We need not be surprised, therefore, at traces of this primitive period of eight
years, meeting us all over the world, or that the ancients regarded it as a very
venerable heirloom that had come down to them from a very remote antiquity. It
was borrowed from Greece by Rome in the days of the Decemviri, aind was a
prominent feature in the calendar of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors.

That the four-year and the eight-year periods were used by the Aztecs is shown
by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall. who says, in her "' Mexican Calendar," p. 16 : " Beside these,
Sahagun describes the great feast held every four years on a fixed day, and another
held every eight years."

Not being aware how much the Pleiades were used by primitive races in
regulating their year, that most careful of observers, Dr. Fewkes, was as much
puzzled as Greswell had been by the subject, and used respecting it almost precisely
the same words as Greswell had employed. In the valuable paper which he read in
1892 before the Natural History Society of Boston, Mass., on " The New Fire Fes-

WITH THE Pleiades. 143

tival of the Tusayan Indians," he says : " Atlcnlion is drawu to the importance attached
to the midnight culmination of the Pleiades in certain rites, especially the invocation of
the six world-quarter deities among the Tusayan Indians. I cannot explain its siRnifi-
cance. Why, of all stellar objects, this minute cluster of stars of a low m.-ignitude
is more important than other stellar groups is not clear to me. Its culminations,
however, is often used to determine the proper time to begin a sacred rite."

He also refers to the same subject in " A Tusayan Initiation Ceremony " (Am.
Folk-lore Journal, July-Sep., 1892).

Thirteen being a prominent number in the Aztec calendar, was used for the
purpose of manufacturing long an3 imposing periods. Hence, thirteen four-year
periods made one of fifty-two years ; and thirteen eight-year periods made one
of one hundred and four years, the great cycle on which, it is said, the Mexican
calendar was based. Nor was the eight-year period in the New World confined to
the Aztecs and Pueblo tribes, for the great tribal funeral games of American Indians
were in many instances held at the end of every eighth year.

Exa,ctly the same thing occurred as respects the great games and festivals
of Greece, many of which were tribal and funereal in their origin. More than
half a century ago Karl Ottfried Miiller pointed out that they were in early times
regulated by the moon and the Pleiades ; and he thus described the cycle of eight
years that was used for that purpose. ("^The Religion and Antiquities of the Doric
Race," translated by Tufnull and Lewis, 1.337.)

" It is not difficult to observe, " he says, " that after ninety-nine lunar months
the setting of the Pleiades coincided pretty exactly with the same phase of
the moon. From this circumstance arose the period of eight yea,rs, called
'Ennaeteris, in conformity with which the great festivals of Apollo at Delphi, Crete,
and Thebes were arranged from the earliest times."

He also says that the Olympiad (a four-year-period) once formed part of thU
eight-year cycle, and that there was in early times a sacred calendar, the festivals
of which were regulated by the Pleiades, but that in time it fell into disuse.

These exceedingly important points brought to light by him either failed to
attract the attention of scholars, or were lost sight of by them. Hence it was a
matter of surprise to the learned when Penrose, in 1892, discovered, in the course of
his explorations on the Acropolis at Athens, that the earliest foundations of the
Parthenon were oriented not to the rismg sun, but to the rising of the Pleiades, (i)

That the Egyptians, like the Mexicans, connected the time of the midnight
culmination of the Pleiades with an idea as to a destruction of the world will be

(i) By a very curious but chance coincidence, on reading in November, 1S91, while at the Mena
House, near Cairo, a report in "Nature" of some interesting lectures delivered before worlcing men on the
subject of the orientation of ancient temples by Sir Norman Lockyer, I wrote to him suggesting the probability
that ancient temples were in some cases oriental to the Pleiades.

144 The Connection of November Flood Traditions

found to be beyond doubt. Up to i86j the exact date of that great landmark of
the Egyptian calendar, the Great Feast of Isis, was not known to Egyptologists.
They were aware that it was the 17th of Athyr, but when that month occurred was
uncertain. This troublesome point I succeeded in settling in 1862 by finding, in a
description of the Egyptian months by a Greek epigrammatist, that " Athyr indi-
cates the shining season of the Pleiades." I also found that Plutarch (de Isid. et Os.)
states that the Great Feast of Isis, which we have seen was held on the 17th day
of Athyr, took place, like the Thesmophoria of the Greeks, and the other great
mournful festivals of nations, " when the Pleiades ivere most distinctly visible." I have
shown in my " Days of Rest of Prehistoric Man " (Can. Magazine, October, 1897),
that all these great autumnal celebrations were merely survivals of " the corroboree
of the Pleiades " of the Australian savages, held in November, when those stars
are to be seen all night, and that they marked two primitive divisions of the year.
The Great Feast of Isis in November marked the beginning of " the Pleiades Above,"
and the Lesser Feast, in April, that of " the Pleiades Below." At the Great Feast
of Isis Osiris was placed in an ark or cofTer ; and there can be little doubt that
the 17th day of Athyr was the birthday of Typhon, whose name meant, according
to Volney, " a Deluge " (Touphan).

In like manner those seasons are still marked by the Hindoo calendar. " The
three great days " of the Feast of Durga (the Dtirga Pujah) occur in the autumn,
and the Lesser Feast is held in April, a fact at which Prof. Max Muller naturally
expressed his surprise. No doubt the Great Feast of Durga, like that of Isis, was
a migrant from southern latitudes, and was held originally where November was
a vernal month.

In the Hebrew calendar the same two divisions of the year of prehistoric man
can be traced. The earliest beginning of the year was autumnal. The Feast of
Tabernacles even now completes the cycle of the yearly festivals, while in April
there is held a second festival. In " Dwarfs and Dwarf Worship " I quoted Prof.
Sayce as saying that there was a connection between those mysterious beings, the
Kabiri and the Patiki; and it may be mentioned here that Syrian and North African
Jews have told me that Kabiri means " a large angel," and Patiki " a little angel."
Strange to say, they call the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles Kabiri, while the
festival in April is known as " the Great Play," Patiki.

On turning to the Hebrew account of the Deluge, we find its daites and inci-
dents very similar to those of Egyptian tnadition.

It is conjectured that the earliest Hebrew months corresponded with the
Egyptian, though the year began a month later. Hence the 17th day of the second
Hebrew month probably agreed with the 17th day of Athyr (the third Egyptian
month).

WITH THE Pleiades. ,.-

'45

The Hebrew narrative three times refers to the ,7th day of the month (the
pecuhar signifieanee of which number, in connection with ancient calendars has
been fully pointed out in - Days of Rest of Prehistoric Man "). The Flood began
on the 17th day of the second month (the .7th of Athyr. when the Great Feast of
Isis took place, and when th. corroboree of the Pleiades is still held, a date too
wth wh.ch the Aztecs connected a destruction of the world); and the ark rested
on Mount Ararat on the 17th day of the seventh month. .•... towards the end of
Apr.I, when the Lesser Isia took place, and when the Jews hold their " Great Play "
the Pattk,. The dove returned with the olive branch on the 17th of the eleventh
month.

No doubt the flood traditions of nations have come down to us from a common
source, for, though greatly dififering i„ details, they often exhibit traces of a sym-
bohsm of numbers which evidently relates to time and the calendar. Sir VVillian,
Jones tells us that there are frequent references in Oriental mysticism to ".he
Deluge of Time"; and Aristotle even goes so far as to say that - the winter of
every great year is a Deluge."

The .story of Menu sailing in the ark with his seven Rishis is but another
version of our history of Noah and his seven companions. To men that lived four
thousand years ago these Flood legends no doubt revealed some mystical story
To us they are dumb. In time some patient scholar may succeed in solving this
problem. Meanwhile it may be wise to look on them as ancient cryptograms, the
key to which has yet to be found.

Why. then, were the end of cycles, the Pleiades and the month of November
so closely connected with an idea as to the end of the world ?

The ends of cycles were so generally marked by the midnight culmination of
the Pleiades that one of the meanings of taur is "a period." "a great year" The
Ludi Secularcs in Rome were also called Ludi Taurii. The midnight culmination
of those stars occurs in November, and that month is marked by "the November
Meteors" (the Taurids), and also every thirty-third year by that terrific phe-
nomenon, the periodic shower of meteors known as the Leonids.

NOVEMBER METEORS.
In a very interesting and eloquent paper on " Meteors," read before the \s.ro
nom.cal Society of Toronto by E. A. Meredith, LL.D., who as a schoolbov
wnnessed the Leonid meteoric showers of 1833. we arc told tha. " Those wh. are
watchmg for Leonids in November must not forget that there is another group of
nnd-November meteoric showers beside the Leonids, viz.. //,. Taurids [or meteors

^46 Thk Connection of Novumher Flood Tkaditions

that radiate from Taurus, the constellation in which are the Pleiades] . These are
often in ordinary years more numerous than the Leonids."

By an odd coincidence, the very time of the midnight culmination of the
Pleiades is that of the maximum of the Taurids. One can well imagine that
when the great annual festival of prehistoric man tQok place, and he watched
the fateful moment when those stars annually crossed the meridi<-in at midnight,
it must have filled him with awe and dread to see meteors from time to time
darting from that part of the heavens. But it is held that annual meteoric displays
were once periodic, and much more brilliant ; and one can believe that thousands
of years ago brilliant periodic showers from Taurus at the time when its stars are
seen all night long must have greatly impressed prehistoric races, and created that
profound reverence for those stars, traces of which everywhere meet us.

While preparing my monograph of 1863, giving the results of "a Comparison
of the Calendars and Festivals of Nations," 1 was thoroughly puzzled by finding
that the times of the year that were marked by the southings of the Pleiades at
midnight and sunrise, i.e., November and August, were connected with a dread of
the destruction of the world. Had my work been written four years later, the
great November meteoric shower (the Leonids of 1886 would have sug-
gested that in the occurrence of the Leonids, Andromedes, and Taurids in Novem-
ber, and of the Perseids in August, we have a key to the mystery, and my present
paper would have been written thirty-one years ago.

Did these meteoric showers take place thousands of years ago, as they now
do, at times of the year when the Pleiades culminate at midnight, and at sunrise,
for they culminated at the beginning of our era nearly a month earlier than
they now do?

Very prolonged and laborious investigations in 1862 showed that the calendar
must have been moved forward nearly a month too much by Julius Caesar, an error
which has been gradually set right by the slow onward movement of the fixed stars
in relation to the seasons (about one degree in every seventy-two years). Hence
about a century ago the Pleiades culminated at midnight on the 17th day of Novem-
ber, just as they did on the 17th day of Athyr. 2,000 years ago.

Has the precession of the eqinoxes had the same effect on November and August
meteoric showers that it has had on the Pleiades ?

" In 1898, between November 23rd and 27th, there will probably occur a splendid
display of the Andromedes. while on November 14th of 1899 and 1900 we may expect
magnificent returns of the Leonids " (Webb's " Celestial Objects for Common
Telescopes," 1. 227).

" Since 1833, Olmsted and Newton, of Yale, and Olbers, of Berlin," says Dr.
Meredith, "have traced the wanderings of these showers through space, and have

WITH THE Pleiades. ,.7

fixed the very date when the November meteors, a compact cluster rushing towards
our system, were caught by the gravitating influence of the planet Uranus, and were
drawn into a closed orbit, the one in which they now move."

Some phenomenon, like November meteors, may have suggested the myth
of the hapless Phaeton being helplessly carried by the runaway horses ot the Sun
through the starry heavens. But the idea of meteoric, fire-breathing steeds, while
rushing wildly through space, being cauglit. and harnessed, and driven round a
celestial chariot-course so vast that, even with their terrific speed, they needed
thirty-three years to complete its circuit, was beyond the wildest dreams of astro-
nomical mythology.

In the November meteoric showers we have a key to the mystery, why ancient
races, and especially the Aztecs, connected the time of the midnight culmination of
the Pleiades with a destruction of the world, and why November was known to
some Asiatic nations as " the Month of Fear."