1888.
Oct. 28.
Avatiko.
Not one London editor could guess the feelings with which I regarded this mannikin from the solitudes of the vast central African forest. To me he was far more venerable than the Memnonium of Thebes. That little body of his represented the oldest types of primeval man, descended from the outcasts of the earliest ages, the Ishmaels of the primitive race, for ever shunning the haunts of the 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 Nassamonian explorers, and made merry with them at their villages on the banks of the Niger. Even as long as forty centuries ago they were known as pigmies, and the famous battle between them and the storks was rendered into song. On every map since Hekataeus’ time, 500 years B.C., they have been located in the region of the Mountains of the Moon. When Mesu led the children of Jacob out of Goshen, they reigned over Darkest Africa undisputed lords; they are there yet, while countless dynasties of Egypt and Assyria, Persia, Greece and Rome, have flourished for comparatively brief periods, and expired. And these little people have roamed far and wide during the elapsed centuries. From the Niger banks, with successive waves of larger migrants, they have come hither to pitch their leafy huts in the unknown recesses of the forest. Their kinsmen are known as Bushmen in Cape Colony, as Watwa in the basin of the Lulungu, as Akka in Monbuttu, as Balia by the Mabodé, as Wambutti in the Ihuru basin, and as Batwa under the shadows of the Lunae Montes.
As the gigantic Madis, and tall Soudanese, and tallest Zanzibaris towered above the little man, it was delightful to observe the thoughts within him express themselves with lightning rapidity on his face. The wonderment that filled him, the quick shifting and chilling fears as to his fate, the anxious doubts that possessed him, the hopes that sprang up as he noted humour on the faces, the momentary shades of anxiety, curiosity to know whence these human monsters had come from, what they would do with him eventually; would they kill him, how? by roasting him alive, or plunging him screaming into a vat-like cooking pot? Ach Gott! I hope not, and a slight shake of the head, with a more pallid colour on the lips and a nervous twitch showed what distress he was in. He would do anything to deserve the favour of these big men, just as the young Nassamonians were willing to do 2600 years ago, when his pigmy forefathers pointed their fingers and jabbered at them in the old Nigritian village. So we took him to sit by us, and stroked him on the back, gave him some roast bananas to put into that distended aldermanic abdomen of his, and the pigmy smiled his gratitude. What a cunning rogue he was! how quick-witted! He spoke so eloquently by gesture that he was understood by the dullest of us.
“How far is it to the next village where we can procure food?”
He placed the side of his right hand across the left wrist. (More than two days’ march.)
“In what direction?”