Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/65



N almost every country pygmies figure either in history or tradition. Tradition always has some foundation; man only weaves fiction from facts, and the best novelists are close observers of human nature. How many things long regarded as fables have been proved true! Herodotus, the father of history, who lived B.C. 484 years, was once called the father of lies, yet many of the stories told by him have been proved correct. Marco Polo, who in 1274 went with his father to Tartary, China, different parts of India, Persia, and Asia Minor, though an illustrious traveler and writer, was considered very untruthful: nevertheless the more we learn of those countries, the more accurate his accounts appear.

The stories of the "little people," fairies, sprites, and elves, must have originated from the existence of an extremely diminutive race, a vague recollection of which has passed from generation to generation. Fable makes the pygmies two feet high. The Greeks, having known of giants, as if to make a contrast, pic-