"Yes," said they, and here an old Obongo addressed himself to my Ashango interpreter. "When I was a boy, we had our settlement for a long time in the forest not far from a big prairie, and farther off there was a big river. Since then," said the old Obongo, "as we moved we have turned our backs upon where the sun rises, and marched in the direction where the sun sets" (which meant that they had been migrating from the east toward the west).
"Did you not see," said I, continuing my questions, "birds with long legs and long beaks in those prairies?"
"Yes," said all the Obongos; "sometimes we kill them, for we love their flesh."
I could not but remember the description Homer gave of the cranes and the Pigmies, and I here give it to you in the translation of a man of whom every American should be proud as one of the greatest poets of the age. Mr. William Cullen Bryant's translation reads as follows:
"As when the cry
Of cranes is in the air, that, flying south
From winter and its mighty breadth of rain,
Wing their way over ocean, and at dawn
Bring fearful battle to the Pigmy race,
Bloodshed and death."—Iliad, iii., 3-8.