t from amongst their fellows, crossed
the desert of Lybia, and, having marched several days in deep sand,
perceived trees growing in the midst of the plain. They approached and
commenced to eat the fruit which they bore. Scarcely had they begun to
taste it, when they were surprised by a great number of men of a stature
much inferior to the middle height, who seized them and carried them off.
They were eventually taken to a city, the inhabitants of which were black.
Near this city ran a considerable river whose course was from west to
east, and in which crocodiles were found. In his account of the Akkas, Mr.
Stanley believed that he had discovered the representatives of the Pigmies
mentioned in this history. Speaking of one of these, he says,[A]
"Twenty-six centuries ago his ancestors captured the five young Nasamonian
explorers, and made merry with them at their villages on the banks of the
Niger." It may be correct to say that, at the period alluded to, the dwarf
races of Africa were in more continuous occupancy of the land than is now
the case, but such an identification as that just mentioned gives a false
idea of the position of the Pigmies of Herodotus. De Quatrefages, after a
most careful examination of the question in all its aspects, finds himself
obliged to conclude, either that the Pigmy race seen by the Nasamonians
still exists on the north of the Niger, which has been identified with the
river alluded to by Herodotus, but has not, up to the present, been
discovered; or that it has disappeared from those regions.

[Footnote A: _Op. supra cit._, ii. 40.]

Pomponius Mela has also his account of African Pigmies. Beyond the Arabian
Gulf, and at the bottom of an indentation of the Red Sea, he places the
Panchaeans, also called Ophiophagi, on account of the fact that they fed
upon serpents. More within the Arabian bay than the Panchaeans are the
Pigmies, a minute race, which became exterminated in the wars which it was
compelled to wage with the Cranes for the preservation of its fruits. The
region indicated somewhat corresponds with that which is assigned to the
Dokos by their describer. In this district, too, other dwarf races have
been reported. The French writer whom I have so often cited says, "The
tradition of Eastern African Pigmies has never been lost by the Arabs. At
every period the geographers of this nation have placed their River of
Pigmies much more to the south. It is in this region, a little to the