[27] The two examples of water-bottles given in the engravings are copies of the originals, which are deposited in the Ethnographical Museum in Berlin. To the one in three compartments handles are attached, being the only instance of the kind that I ever saw.
[28] Vide vol. i. page 547.
CHAPTER XVI.
The Pygmies. Nubian stories. Ancient classical allusions. Homer, Herodotus, Aristotle. My introduction to Pygmies. Adimokoo the Akka. Close questioning. War-dance. Visits from many Akka. Mummery’s Pygmy corps. My adopted Pygmy. Nsewue’s life and death. Dwarf races of Africa. Accounts of previous authors: Battel, Dapper, Kölle. Analogy of Akka with Bushmen. Height and complexion. Hair and beards. Shape of the body. Awkward gait. Graceful hands. Form of skull. Size of eyes and ears. Lips. Gesticulations. Dialect inarticulate. Dexterity and cunning. Munza’s protection of the race.
Whenever two or three Egyptians are found in company, the chances are very great that their conversation, if it could be overheard, would be found to relate to the market prices of the day, or to some fluctuations in the state of trade. With the romantic sons of the Nubian Nile-valley the case would be very different. Ample opportunity of making this comparison was continually afforded me during the long evenings which I passed in my transit upon the waters of the Upper Nile; and even now I can recall with vivid interest the hours when, from my detached compartment on the stern of the boat, I could, without being observed, listen to the chatter by which the Nubians on the voyage beguiled their time. They seemed to talk with eagerness of all the wonders of the world. Some would expatiate upon the splendours of the City of the Caliphs, and others enlarge upon the accomplishment of the Suez Canal and the huge ships of the Franks; but the stories that ever commanded the most rapt attention were those which treated of war and of the chase; or, beyond all, such as described the wild beasts and still wilder natives of Central Africa.
NUBIAN TALES.
It was not with stories in the sense of ‘The Thousand and One Nights’ that this people entertained each other; neither did they recite their prolix histories as though they were reading at the celebration of Ramadan in Cairo, amidst the halls where night by night they abandoned themselves to the enjoyment of their coffee. These things I had now long ago left far behind; however, occasionally, as the expiring strain of Arabia, I might still hear the song of Abd-el-Kader the sheikh, or of Aboo Zeyd the hero. My whole style of living seemed now to partake of the character of an Odyssey; it appeared to be adapted for the embellishment of an Homeric episode, and such an episode in truth was already awaiting me.
Of the Nile itself, which had the appearance, day by day, of becoming wider as farther and farther we progressed towards the south, they affirmed that it issued from the ocean by which Africa was girt; they would declare that we were on the route which would lead us, like the cranes, to fight with the Pygmies; ever and again they would speak of Cyclops, of Automoli, or of “Pygmies,” but by whatever name they called them, they seemed never to weary of recurring to them as the theme of their talk. Some there were who averred that with their own eyes they had seen this people of immortal myth; and these—men as they were whose acquaintance might have been coveted by Herodotus and envied by Aristotle—were none other than my own servants.
It was a fascinating thing to hear them confidently relate that in the land to the south of the Niam-niam country there dwelt people who never grew to more than three feet in height, and who wore beards so long that they reached to their knees.[29] It was affirmed of them that, armed with strong lances, they would creep underneath the belly of an elephant and dexterously kill the beast, managing their own movements so adroitly that they could not be reached by the creature’s trunk. Their services in this way were asserted to contribute very largely to the resources of the ivory traders. The name by which they are known is the “Shebber-digintoo,” which implies the growth of the disproportioned beard.
I listened on. The more, however, that I pondered silently over the stories that they involuntarily disclosed—the more I studied the traditions to which they referred—so much the more I was perplexed to explain what must either be the creative faculty or the derived impressions of the Nubians. Whence came it that they could have gained any knowledge at all of what Homer had sung? How did it happen that they were familiar at all with the material which Ovid and Juvenal, and Nonnus and Statius worked into their verse, giving victory at one time to the cranes, and at another to the Pygmies themselves?