Page:Here and there in Yucatan - miscellanies (IA herethereinyucat00lepl 0).djvu/67

 minute men; that they lived in caves washed by the waters of the Nile. Pliny even gives various details regarding their habits, and the geographical position of the places where they dwelt. On the banks of the upper Nile, where the Greeks located the pygmies, modem travelers have found whole tribes of dwarfish men.

In Russia and Turkey, until quite lately, great sympathy was felt for dwarfs, they being generally considered keen-witted and often talented. In Germany, in the eighteenth century, a dwarf was regarded as a necessary appendage to every noble family. In this present century there have been isolated cases of extremely small people, as, for instance, Richebourg, who died in Paris in 1858 at the age of ninety; he was twenty-three inches high. During the revolutionary period he is said to have passed in and out of Paris, as an infant in the arms of a nurse, with dispatches very dangerous to carry, wrapped in his baby clothes.

In Mexico, especially in the State of Yucatan, and adjacent islands, there are many stories current about dwarfs. If the natives are questioned concerning the builders of the old ruined edifices found in those parts, they invariably say, "The Aluxob (pygmies) built them." In the islands of Cozumel