UNKNOWN.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 202, 7 May 1887, Page 2

UNKNOWN.

A whill ago Mr Uienfeil, of the Congo missions encountered on the Bosaii river, south of the Congo, the Batwa dwarfs whom Stanley mentions in " The Daik Continent,' though Stanley did not see them. (Jrenfel says these little people exist over a large extent of country, their villages being scattered here and there among other tribes. Wissmann and Pogge also met them a few years ago in their journey to Nyangwe. It was long supposed that the story of Herodotus about the pigmies of Africa was mythical, but w ithin the pa.st twenty years abundant evidence has accumulated of the existence of a number of tribes of curious little folks in Equatorial Africa. The chief among these tiibes aie the Akka, whom Schweinfurth found noithwest of Albert Nyassa ; the Obongo, discovered by I)u Chaillu in West Africa, southeast of Gaboon, and the Batwa, south of the Congo. These little people lange in height from four feet two inches to about four feet eight inches. They aie intellectually as well as physically inferior to the other tribes of Africa They are perhaps nearer the brute kingdom than any other human beings. The Obongo, for instance, wear no semblance of clothing ; make no huts except to bend over and fasten to the ground the tops of three or four young trees, which they cover with leaves; possess no aits except the making of bows and ai rows, and do not till the soil. They live on the smaller game of the forest and on nuts and berries. They regard the leopard, which now and then makes a meal of one of them, as their deadliest enemy. They li\ c only a few days or weeks in one place, bury in ar themselves in .some other part of the interminable woods as soon as the nuts and othei food supplies near their camp begin to grow scarce. When Schweinfurth first met the Akka dwarfs, he found himself surrounded by what he supposed was a crowd of impudent boys. There were several hundred of them, and lie soon found that they were veritable dwarfs, and that their tribe pro bably numbered several thousand souls. One of these dwarfs was taken to Italy a few years ago; was taught to read, and excited much interest among scientific men. There are other tribes of dwarfs in Abyssinia and also in Somaliland. « Tt is believed that all these people, including- the Bushmen of South Africa, are the remains of an aboriginal population that is now becoming extinct. In the migrations and subjugations that have been in progress for many centuries among powerful tribes, the dwarf tribe of Africa has been scattered, and isolated fragments are still found in widely-separated parts of the Continent. - " N. Y. Sun."