Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 49.djvu/64

52 into camp. The height of the man was four feet; his hands and feet were small and delicate; his body was rounded and wellproportioned, and his abdomen protuberant; the hair on his body was almost furlike, being nearly half an inch in length. On viewing this little man, Stanley rhapsodizes as follows: "Not one London editor could guess the feeling with which I regarded this manikin from the solitudes of the vast African forest. To me he was more venerable than the Memnonium of Thebes. That little body of his represented the oldest types of primitive man, descended from the outcasts of the earliest ages—the Ishmaelites of the primitive race—forever shunning the haunts of workers, deprived of the joy and delight of the home hearth, eternally exiled by their vice to live the life of human beasts in morass and fen and jungle wild. Think of it! Twenty-six centuries ago his ancestors captured the five young Nasamonian explorers, and made merry with them, at their village on the Niger" (In Darkest Africa). Stanley saw pygmies on several occasions after this, and Emin Pasha gives some interesting measurements in Stanley's book; so, I think, from the evidence adduced, that we can safely assert that there are tribes of pygmies, both continental and insular, in Asia, and that they are likewise still extant in Africa. All of these little negroes, both in Asia and in Africa, have certain anatomical, physiological, and skeletal characteristics in common, which declare that originally they must have come from the same stock. The true negro is dolichocephalic (longheaded); is of an average height as compared with the white race; his form is not rounded, but, on the contrary, is generally spare and angular; he is not at all hairy, and a strong, acrid, hircic, and disgusting odor emanates from his person. The negrito or pygmy, wherever found, is, on the contrary, brachycephalic (round-headed) or subbrachycephalic; he is far below the average height; his form is rounded; his body is generally covered with a soft, downy fell, and no appreciable odor is given off from his person. The true negro has large feet and hands, while in the negrito these members are small and delicately shaped.

While looking over some old papers published in New Orleans in 1842, I found a short description of a batch of, presumably, freshly imported slaves. Among them were "six or eight very small negroes, men and women, all of whom were under five feet in height. Who ran in this cargo is not known, but Mr. has the disposal of them." An old bill of sale, now in the possession of Mr. Wolfgang Werner, of Savannah, dated April 2.'), 1810, gives a description of two adult slaves, male and female, in which the height of the male is declared to be "four feet six inches (4 ft. in.), and the female four feet three inches (4 ft. 3 in.)." Finally, in the possession of the Armistede family, of