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Schweinfurth says that they live south of the country occupied by the Niam-Niam, and that their stature varies from 4 feet to 4 feet 10 inches. These people are called the Akkas, and wonderful tales are told of their agility and cunning, characteristics that seem to compensate for their small stature.
And all the guests in white gloves, which they insisted on keeping on for the portrait on account of the rarity of such an event with them. No, I thought I should go mad. Those black faces, the great white patches made by the dresses, the gloves, the orange-blossoms, the unlucky bride, looking like a queen of Niam-niam under her wreath merging indistinguishably into her hair.
On the border are the Niam-Niam, who circumcise. I suppose they took it from these Arab tribes. I only hope you will come up. "Believe me, "Yours sincerely, "C. G. GORDON." A few weeks later Burton's laconic refusal of Darfur reached Gordon. That Gordon was nettled a little is apparent from the opening paragraph of the following letter.
I was forced to take the route to the Northwest, ran into a pathless wilderness, and for five years was a captive of a tribe of the Wadai. The Niam-Niam, who were at war with the Wadai, liberated me.
Friedrich Benda was again in Europe. All the newspapers contained accounts of the discoveries made on the expedition. Last autumn Arab dealers in ivory had found him in the land of Niam-Niam, taken an interest in him, and finally brought him, then seemingly in the throes of imminent death, back to the Nile.
Schweinfurth found to the south of the Niam-Niam country a tribe of full-statured negroes called the Mombootoos, whose chief, Moonza, kept close to the Royal residence a colony of pygmies who were called in that country by the name "Akkas." Schweinfurth ascertained that they are spread to the number of many thousands along the borders of the great Congo forest and form numerous tribes.
Miani's pygmies were members of a tribe discovered by the distinguished traveller Schweinfurth, who, in 1870, was the first to visit the country of the Niam-Niam, to the west of the sources of the Nile, and had the honour of showing that the myths of the ancient Greeks as to a nation of pygmies were based on fact, and that the definite words of Aristotle as to the existence of these pygmy people on the upper reaches of the Nile were correct.
Schweinfurth describes such a worship among the Niam-Niam, who hold that the forest is inhabited by invisible beings. This worship is naturally combined with that of birds, which become the confidants of the forest, repeat the mysteries of mother earth, and sometimes become interpreters and prophets to man.
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