Page:Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization.djvu/244

234 tribe of Amikouanes on the river Oyapok, who are also called "long-eared Indians," their ears being stretched to their shoulders. This nation, he says, which has been hitherto unknown, is extremely savage; they have no knowledge of fire.

It is a very curious thing that one of the oldest stories of a race of fireless men is also the newest. In Ethiopia, says the geographer Pomponius Mela, "there are people to whom fire was so totally unknown before the coming of Eudoxus, and so wondrously were they pleased with it when they saw it, that they had the greatest delight in embracing the flames and hiding burning things in their bosom till they were hurt." Pliny places these fireless men in his catalogue of monstrous Ethiopian tribes, between the dumb men and the pygmies. To some, he says, the use of fire was unknown before the time of Ptolemy Lathyrus, king of Egypt. His mention of the name of Ptolemy Lathyrus shows that he, too, is quoting the voyages of Eudoxus of Cyzicus. Whether there was such a person as Eudoxus, and whether he really made the voyages attributed to him or not, is not very clear; but his story, like that of Sindbad, embodies notions current at the time it was written. And with such tenacity does the popular mind hold on to old stories, that now, after a lapse of some two thousand years, the fireless men and the pygmies are brought by the modern Ethiopians into even closer contact than in the pages of Pliny. Dr. Krapf was told that the Dokos, men four feet high, living south of Kaffa and Susa, subsisted on roots and serpents, and were not acquainted with fire. As far as the pygmies are concerned, there appears to be a foundation for the story, in a race of small men really living there. Krapf was shown a slave four feet high, who, they told him, was a Doko. But between four feet and three spans, the height assigned by Pliny to pygmy races elsewhere, there is a difference. Nor is this the only instance of the wonderful permanence of old stories in this part of the world, quite irrespectively of their being true. Within no great distance, an old negro gave Mr. Petherick an