be

"Mahammad, from Haoussa, had left his country fifty years fore. New-comers had told him that since his departure a new race of tailed savages had been discovered in the mountains to the south.

"Griss, from Haoussa, had witnessed the cannibalism of the Niam-Niams, but had not seen those with tails, although he had heard of them.

"Neidassara, from Haoussa, had served against the NiamNiams, and had killed several. They had tails. When children were born they had tails about two inches long. He had seen a man who had one about seventy centimètres in length. Generally they were about eighteen inches long, and an inch and a half in diameter. These people are like negroes in other respects. They are cannibals. The tail has no movement; and they have seats to sit down, in which a hole has been pierced for the tail to pass through. Neidassara made this campaign under the command of the Sultan of Kano in person. The expedition brought back three Niam-Niams as prisoners to Kano. They excited great curiosity, but the sultan ordered them to be clothed. It was the first time that any of their lives had been spared."

I make no comment on this evidence, abstracted from Renseignements sur l'Afrique Centrale, et sur une Nation d'hommes à queue, par Francis de Castelnau; but refer the reader to that work for geographical information which appears to be valuable, but for which I can find no space here. I will only add the rumors, and in one case the trustworthy evidence, which I heard during my visit to Western Africa.

The natives of Equatorial Africa not only assert the existence of a tailed people, but of a hoofed or cloven-footed race. Captain Lawlin, who had traded during twenty years in the Camma country, believed that such creatures existed in the interior. When Mr. Mackey first visited the Fans, they crowded round him to look at his boots; for at first they believed that he belonged to the hoofed tribe of which they had heard so often, and which they said inhabited a country to the northeast of them.

Mr. Sparrhawk, an American trader who was well acquainted with the Congo, said that he had frequently been told of a tailed people living in the interior. He had spoken about it to a native who had traveled a considerable distance in the interior, and who was called the king of the slave-dealers. He answered, with some reluctance, that of course he knew that he (Sparrhawk) only wish

ed to laugh at him. But such people did exist; and as the slavedealers always refused to buy them, they had sometimes been brought down to the markets with their tails cut off as close as possible, but with the stumps visible.

When I was at Ngumbi, Etia told me of a people in the interior who went with their heels forward and their toes backward, like the orоdodakλvλor of the ancients, which were said to inhabit India, and like those of whom Humboldt heard in South America.

He also told me of a people that had feet like a deer, and assured me that he had himself seen one of them, who was on a visit from his own country, which was far away, and he treated with great reverence, because it was thought that his race was under the protection of the spirits. This hoofed man was very short, but like a negro in all other respects, and had a language of his own. I was struck with the indifferent tone with which Etia gave me this account: there was none of that warmth of voice and gesture which usually accompanies native exaggeration. I asked him if he did not think it very wonderful that such a being should exist. He said that he did not think it more wonderful than white men. I told him, laughing, that I did not believe that he had seen such a man as that. He answered, laconically, that when he had told the Bush-people he had seen white men they would not believe him.

Such evidence as that of negroes and of old voyagers it may be easy enough to reject. But I was told by the captain of a trader, and, as far as I could judge, a most trustworthy man, that he had seen a woman at Masarado, near Cape Palmas, who had a tail. He described it as short, and without any hair-apparently a prolongation of the spine. She spoke a language; and the Coast natives said that she came from the Bush, where there was a tribe of them. This captain's name, I believe, was Neill; he was an employé of the house of King and Co., at Bristol. I must own that I find it very difficult to reject the testimony of a person who gave it to me in so exact and moderate a manner. Finally, a sous-officier, whom I met in Senegal, told me, without my having mentioned the subject, that two of his comrades in Algeria, having made an exploration into the interior, had also seen a people having tails short and smooth, as already described.

Whether such a race exist or not is of no importance in comparative anthropology. It is simply a question of pathology.

This tail appears to be merely the external prolongation of the vertebral column, which in every individual, male or female, forms a tail of from two to three inches long. We are, therefore, tailed animals. These Niam-Niams and Philippine Islanders are animals with a fuller caudal development, that is all.

This tail is an organic peculiarity, which has been perpetuated by hereditary transmission. That children have been born with tails is a recognized fact in pathology, and instances have been quoted by Aldrovandus, Schenckius, and others. It is also well known that monstrosities can be perpetuated; for what, after all, is a monstrosity but that which in the lower kingdoms is termed a variety? and varieties can form a race. In 1731 the porcupine man was brought before the notice of the Royal Society. That monstrosity has been perpetuated; for the porcupine family is existing in its third generation. Similar cases might be instanced of six-fingered families. It will easily be understood that, in Europe, intermarriage with others would gradually extinguish such a character; but in a savage community, such a brood of monsters would be exiled, and breeding in-and-in would procreate a

race.

There are, perhaps, few who know that a tribe of tailed men once existed in Kent, and became so notorious in Europe that it was at one time popularly believed that the whole nation were homines caudati.

There is an account of them in Bulwer's "Man Transformed, or the Artificiall Changeling:" a very curious old work; the passage I will quote at length:

"When Augustine the monke, being sent by Gregory the Great, came to preach the Gospell unto the English nation at Rochester, the vulgar, in derision of the Holy man, pin'd fishe's tails upon his garment, or, as some say, threw them at him; whereupon Augustine prayed to God that their children might be borne with Tailes, and it pleased God to confirme his Doctrine by inflicting this punishment upon the Posterity of that incredulous people; so that these Kentish Long-tailes proceeded not from the influence of Heaven, but from a miracle. And although Antonius Neirembergensis thinks that this punishment endured but for a time, and that this Miracle is now ceased, yet I am informed by an ingenious and honest Gentleman of good worth, who professed that he had read in some of our Chronicles, or other author whose name he could not very well remember, that there is at this day

(1653) a Family in Kent who have to Surname the name of a village very neare Rochester, whereof all that are descended have a Taile, insomuch that you may know any one to be rightly descended of that Family by having a Taile; yet I must suspect some failing in my friend's memory, because I find in Debrio his disquisition of Magick, that the originall of the Kentish Longtailes was after this manner. 'Thomas Becket, Arch-Bishop of Canterbury, being in disgrace with Henry the Second, and riding through Stroud, near Rochester, the inhabitants, to put an affront upon him, cut off his Horse's Taile, which ever since was entailed upon them, insomuch as you may know a man of Stroud by his long Taile.' And to make it a little more credible, that the Rumpbone among bruitish and strong-dockt nations doth often sprout out with such an excrescence or beastly emanation, I am informed by an honest young man of Captaine Morris's company, in Lieutenant-Generall Ireton's Regiment, that at Cashell, in the county of Tipperary, in the province of Munster, in Carrick Patrick Church, seated on a hill or rock, stormed by the Lord Trichequine, and where there were neare seven hundred put to the sword, and none saved but the Mayor's wife and his Son, there were found among the slaine of the Irish, when they were stripped, divers that had Tailes near a quarter of a yard long; the Relator, being very diffident of the truth of this story, after enquiry was ensured of the certainty thereof by forty Souldiers, that testified upon their oath that they were eye-witnesses, being present at the action. It is reported, also, that in Spain there is another such tailed nation."

CHAPTER XXXIV.

FEATURES OF AFRICA.

The Mother and her Children.-Central Plateau after Buffon, Lacépède, and Ritter. -Description of the Western Wall.—The Lowlands of Western Africa.

THERE is a woman whose features, in expression, are sad and noble, but which have been degraded, distorted, and rendered repulsive by disease; whose breath is perfumed by rich spices and by fragrant gums, yet through all steals the stench of the black mud of the mangroves and the miasma of the swamps; whose lap is filled with gold, but beneath lies a black snake, watchful and concealed; from whose breasts stream milk and honey, mingled with poison and with blood; whose head lies dead and cold, and yet is alive. In her horrible womb heave strange and monstrous embryos. Swarming round her are thousands of her children, whose hideousness inspires disgust, their misery compassion.

She kisses them upon the lips, and with her own breath she strikes them corpses by her side. She feeds them at her breasts, and from her own breasts they are poisoned, and they die. She offers them the treasures of her lap, and as each hand is put forth the black snake bites it with his fatal fangs.

Thus, for ages and ages, this woman has continued to bring forth her children, and to kill them as she attempts to nourish them. Look at the map of Africa. Does it not resemble a woman with a huge burden on her back, and with her face turned toward America?

"Ethiopia is stretching out her hands unto God?"

The redemption of Africa shall be the great work of this generation.

I will now attempt to sketch her features; to analyze the poison which flows from her lips and from her breasts; to write the history of her unhappy offspring; to examine their origin, their characters, and capabilities; and, finally, to show how they may be taught to pour an elixir of life into their mother's veins; to suck the poison from her system; to kill the reptile in her lap;