Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/571

 buildings. The recently destroyed reception hall of the king of the Western Monbuttus resembled in general outline a great railway terminus; the roof, over 100 feet long, 50 wide, and 40 high, gracefully arched, and of perfectly regular form, rested on three rows of polished wooden pillars, these pillars as well as the thousand geometrical wooden figures being painted in three colours, white, blood-red, and yellow ochre.

Amongst the Monbuttus, and more especially amongst the Negro or Bantu tribes more to the south, are scattered numerous groups of the Akka race, who, like the Vua-Twa of the Upper Congo, seem to be descended from the aborigines who occupied the land before the Bantu invasions. A province south of the Welle is said to be still held by these aborigines, who are probably the Bakka-Bakka of

the Portuguese writers of the seventeenth century, and akin to the Badias of U-Nyoro in the region of the equatorial lakes. Of all the African "dwarfs," the Akkas are considered by the learned as the best representatives of the "little people" mentioned by Herodotus in connection with the wanderings of the Nasamons. The two sent by Miani to Italy in 1873 were respectively 4 feet 4 inches and 4 feet 8 inches high, while the tallest seen by Schweinfurth did not exceed 5 feet. The pure Akka type is brachycephalic (round-headed), with disproportionately large head, very projecting jaws, receding chin, mouth nearly always open, less tumid lips than those of most Negroes, prominent cheek-bones, wrinkled cheeks; small nose separated from the frontal bone by a very marked cavity, large ear, and wide-open eye giving them a somewhat birdlike aspect. The body is of a lighter brown complexion than that of the true Negro, is of