purpose of taking the reader from north to south.  As in the case of most African travels, when instruments are not used, the distances must be reduced:  in chapter xii. the Shekyani villages are placed sixty miles due east of Sanga-Tanga; whereas the map shows twenty.  Mr. W. Wimvood Reade declares that the Apingi country, the ultima Thule of the explorer, is distant from Ngumbi “four foot-days’ journey;” as mm. de Compiegne and Marche have shown, the tribe in question extends far and wide.  Others have asserted that seventy-five miles formed the maximum distance.  But many of M. du Chaillu’s disputed distances have been proved tolerably correct by mm.  Serval and Griffon du Bellay, who were sent by the French government in 1862 to survey the Ogobe.  A second French expedition followed shortly afterwards, under the charge of mm.  Labigot and Touchard; and finally that of 1873, like all preceding it, failed to find any serious deviation from fact.

The German exploring expedition (July 25, 1873) confirms the existence of M. du Chaillu’s dwarfs, the Obongo tribe, scoffed at in England because they dwell close to a fierce people of Patagonian proportions.  The Germans report that they are called “Babongo,” “Vambuta,” and more commonly “Bari,” or “Bali;” they dwell fourteen days’ march from the mouth of the Luena, or River of Chinxoxo.  I have not seen it remarked that these pygmies are mentioned by Andrew Battel Plinian at the end of the sixteenth century.  “To the north-east of Mani Kesoch,” he tells us, “are a kind of little people called Matimbas, who are no bigger than boys twelve years old, but are very thick, and live only upon flesh, which they kill in the woods with bows and darts.”  Of the Aykas south of the Welle River, discovered by Dr. Schweinfurth, I need hardly speak.  It is not a little curious to find these confirmations of Herodotean reports about dwarfish tribes in the far interior, the Dokos and the Wabilikimo, so long current at Zanzibar Island, and so long looked upon as mere fables.

Our departure from Mbata had broken the spell, and Forteune did keep his word; I was compelled in simple justice to cry “Peccavi.”  On the very evening of our arrival at Glass Town the youth Kanga brought me a noble specimen of what he called a Nchigo Mpolo, sent by Forteune’s bushmen; an old male with brown eyes and dark pupils.  When placed in an arm-chair, he ludicrously suggested a pot-bellied and patriarchal negro considerably the worse for liquor.  From crown to sole he measured 4 feet 10 3/4 inches, and from finger-tip to finger-tip 6 feet 1 inch.  The girth of the head round ears and eyebrows was 1 foot 11 inches; of the chest, 3 feet 2 inches; above the hip joints, 2 feet 4 inches; of the arms below the shoulder, 2 feet 5 inches; and of the legs, 2 feet 5 inches.  Evidently these are very handsome proportions, considering what he was, and there was a suggestion of ear lobe which gave his countenance a peculiarly human look.  He had not undergone the inhuman Hebrew-Abyssinian operation to which M. du Chaillu’s gorillas had been exposed, and the proportions rendered him exceedingly remarkable.