much time in Smith County, Tennessee, attending to some mining business,
discovered near Watertown in that county some remarkable graves, which
were disclosed by the washing of a small creek in its passage through a
low bottom. The graves were from eighteen inches to two feet in length,
most of them being of the smaller size, and were formed by an excavation
of about fifteen inches below the surface, in which were placed four
undressed slabs of rock--one in the bottom of the pit, one on each side,
and one on the top. Human skeletons, some with nearly an entire skull,
and many with well-defined bones, were found in them. The teeth were
very diminutive, but evidently those of adults. Earthen crocks were also
found with the skeletons. General Milroy could not gain any satisfactory
information respecting these pigmy graves. The oldest inhabitants of the
vicinity knew nothing of their origin or history, except that there was
a large number of similar graves near Statesville in the same county,
and also a little burial-ground at the mouth of Stone River, near the
city of Nashville. General Milroy deposited the bones found by him in
the State Library at Nashville.”
That a race of dwarfs live in Central Africa, is now well known. Ronzo
de Leo, who travelled in Africa, for many years with Dr. Livingstone, at
one time almost stood alone in his assertion of this fact. But he was
supported in his statement by G. Eugene Wolff, who had been in Central
Africa with Stanley, and he maintained that, on the southern branches of
the Congo, he had seen whole villages of Lilliputians, of whom the men
were not over four and a half feet high, whilst the women were a great
deal smaller. He described them as being both brave and cunning, expert
with bow and arrow, with which they readily bring down the African
bison, antelope, and even elephants. As trappers of small animals they
are unsurpassed. In a close pinch they use the lance with astonishing
dexterity, and an ordinary sling, in their hands, is wielded with
wonderful skill.
These dwarfs collect the sap of the palm, with which they make soap. The
men are smooth-faced, and of a rich mahogany colour, while the hair is
short, and as black as night. Tens of thousands of them live on the
south branch of the Congo.
Mr. Stanley in his expedition for the relief of Emin Pacha,[21]
encountered some tribes of these pigmies, but he does not agree with the
account which Mr. Wolff gives of them, who describes them as an affable,
kind-hearted people, of simple ways, and devoid of vicious tendencies to
a greater degree than most semi-barbaric races. The women are
industrious and amiable.
Stanley, on the contrary, found them very annoying, and had a lively
recollection of their poisoned arrows--but, at the present writing, he
not having returned, and we, having no record but his letters, had
better suspend our judgment as to the habits and tempers of these small
people.
Wolff says they stand in awe of their bigger neighbours, but are so
brave and cunning that, with all the odds of physique against them, the
pigmies are masters of the situation.
GIANTS.
This last sentence seems almost a compendium of _The History of Tom
Thumb_, for his wit enabled him to overcome the lubber-headed giants, in
every conflict he was engaged in with them--they were no match for him.
Take the Romances of Chivalry. Pacolet, and all the dwarfs, were endowed
with acute wits, and there was very little they could not compass--but
the giants! their ultimate fate was always to be slain by some knight,
and their imprisoned knights and damsels set free. A dwarf was a cleanly
liver, but a giant was turbulent, quarrelsome, lustful, and occasionally
cannibal. Fe Fi Fo Fum was the type of colossal man, and, as it is quite
a pleasure to whitewash their characters in these respects, I hasten to
do so before further discoursing on the subject of these great men.
It is Olaus Magnus who thus tells us
“Of the sobriety of Giants and Champions.”
[Illustration]
“That most famous Writer of the _Danish_ affairs, _Saxo_, alleged
before, and who shall be often alleged hereafter, saith, that amongst
other mighty strong men in the _North_, who were as great as Giants,
there was one _Starchaterus Thavestus_, whose admirable and heroick
Vertues are so worthily extolled by him, that there were scarce any
like him in those dayes in all _Europe_, or in the whole World, or
hardly are now, or ever shall be. And amongst other Vertues he ascribes
to that high-spirited man, he mentions his sobriety, which is
principally necessary for valiant men: and I thought fit to annex that
peculiarly to this relation, that we may, as in a glass, see more
cleerly the luxury of this lustful age. For, as the same _Saxo_
testifies, that valiant _Starchaterus_ loved frugality, and loved not
immoderate dainties. Alwayes neglecting pleasure, he respected Vertue,
imitating the antient manner of Continency, and he desired a homely
provision of his Diet; he hated costly suppers; wherefore hating
profusion in Diet, and feeding on smoaked and rank meat, he drove away
Hunger, with the greater appetite, as his meat was but of one kind, lest
he should remit and abate the force of his true Vertue, by the contagion
of outward Delights, as by some adulterate sweetness, or should abrogate
the Rule of antient Frugality, by unusual Superstitions for Gluttony.
Moreover, he could not endure to spend rost and boyled meat all at one
Meal; holding that to be a monstrous Food, that Cookery had tampered
with divers things together: Wherefore, that he might turn away the
Luxury of the _Danes_, that they borrowed from the _Germans_, that made
them so effeminate, amongst the rest he made Verses in his Country
Language.” Omitting many of them, he sang thus:
“_Starchaterus_ his Verses on _Frugality_.
“Strong men do love raw meat; nor do they need,
Or love, on dainty Cates and Feasts to feed,
War is the thing they most delight to breed,
You may sooner bite off their beards that are
Full hard, and stiff with bristled, rugged, hair,
Than their wide mouths leave Milk their daily fare:
We fly from dainty Kitchins, and do fill
Our Bellies with rank Meats, and Countray swill,
Of old, men fed on boyl’d Meats, ’gainst their will.
A dish of Grass, that had no smack, did hold
Hog’s and sheep’s flesh together, hot or cold,
Nor to pollute their meats with mingling were they bold;
He that eats Cream we bid him for to be
Strong, and to have a mind that’s bold and free.
* * * * *
Eleven Lords of elder time we were,
That waited on King Hachon, and at fare
_Helgo Begachus_ sat first in order there.
First dish he eat was a dry’d Gammon, and
A Crust as hard as Flint he took in hand,
This made his hungry, yawning stomach stand:
No man at Table fed on stinking meat,
But what was good and common, each man eat,
Content with simple fare, though nere so great;
The greatest were not Gluttons, nor yet fine,
The King himself full sparingly would dine.
No Drinks were used that did of Honey bost,
Beer was their common Liquor, _Ceres_ owest,
They fed on Meats were little boyl’d, no rost.
Each Table was with Meats but meanly drest,
Few Dishes on’t, Antiquity thought best;
And in plain Fare each held himself most blest.
There were no Flagons, nor broad Bowls in use,
Nor painted Dishes grown to great abuse,
Each, at the Tap, did fill his wooden cruze.
No man, admirer of the former days,
Did use Tankards or Oxeys;[22] for their ways
Were sparing, almost empty Dishes this bewrays.
No Silver Basons, or guilt Cups were thought
Fit by the Host, and to the table brought,
To garnish, or by Ghests were vainly sought.”
By precept, and example, he induced many to Temperance and
Sobriety--but, in spite of his moderation in food and drink, he was a
most outrageous pirate, and Berserker.
At last, however, old, and weary of life, he sought death, and meeting
Hatherus, son of a noble whom he had killed, begged him as a favour to
cut his head off--and the young man, obligingly consenting, his head was
severed from his body, and literally bit the ground. There are records
of many more Northern giants, but none of so edifying a life as
Starchaterus.
Giants are plentiful in the Bible, the Emins, Anakims, and the
Zamzummims: there was Og, King of Bashan, whose iron bedstead was 9
cubits long by 4 broad--_i.e._, 13 ft. 6 in. by 6 ft. That redoubtable
champion of the Philistines, Goliath of Gath, was six cubits and a span
high--_i.e._, 9 ft. 9 in. In 2 Samuel xxi. 15-22, we find mention made
of many giants.
“15 Moreover the Philistines had yet war again with Israel; and David
went down, and his servants with him, and fought against the
Philistines; and David waxed faint.
“16 And Ishbi-benob, which was of the sons of the giants, the weight of
whose spear weighed three hundred shekels of brass in weight, he being
girded with a new sword, thought to have slain David.
“17 But Abishai the son of Zeruiah succoured him, and smote the
Philistine, and killed him....
“18 And it came to pass after this, that there was again a battle with
the Philistines at Gob: then Sibbechai the Hushathite slew Saph, which
was of the sons of the giant.
“19 And there was again a battle in Gob with the Philistines, where
Elhanan the son of Jaare-oregim, a Bethlehemite, slew the brother of
Goliath the Gittite, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam.
“20 And there was yet a battle in Gath, where was a man of great
stature, and on every foot six toes, four and twenty in number; and he
also was born to the giant.
“21 And when he defied Israel, Jonathan the son of Shimeah, the brother
of David, slew him.
“22 These four were born to the giant in Gath, and fell by the hand of
David, and by the hand of his servants.”
But these were mere pigmies if we can believe M. Henrion, who in 1718
calculated out the heights of divers notable persons--thus he found Adam
was 121 ft. 9 in. high, Eve 118 ft. 9 in., Noah 27 ft., Abraham 20 ft.,
and Moses 13 ft.
Putting aside the mythical classical giants, Pliny says: “The tallest
man that has been seen in our times, was one Gabbaras by name, who was
brought from Arabia by the Emperor Claudius; his height was nine feet
and as many inches. In the reign of Augustus, there were two persons,
Posio and Secundilla, by name, who were half a foot taller than him;
their bodies have been preserved as objects of curiosity in the Museum
of the Sallustian family.”
But it is reserved to Sir John Mandeville to have found the tallest
giants of, comparatively speaking, modern times. “And beyond that valey
is a great yle, where people as great as giaunts of xxviii fote long,
and they have no clothinge but beasts skyns that hang on them, and they
eate no bread, but flesh raw, and drink milke, and they have no houses,
& they ate gladlyer fleshe of men, than other, & men saye to us that
beyonde that yle is an yle where are greater giaunts as xlv or l fote
long, & some said l cubits long (_75 feet_) but I saw them not, and
among those giaunts are great shepe, and they beare great wolle, these
shepe have I sene many times.”
EARLY MEN.
On the antiquity of man it is impossible to speculate, because we have
no data to go upon. We know that his earliest existence, of which we
have any cognisance, must have been at a period when the climate and
fauna of the Western continent was totally different to their present
state. Then roamed over the land, the elephant, rhinoceros,
hippopotamus, the Bos-primigenius, the reindeer, the cave bear, the
brown and the Arctic bears, the cave hyæna, and many other animals now
quite extinct. We know that man then existed, because we find his
handiwork in the shape of manufactured flint implements, mixed with the
bones of these animals--and, occasionally, with them human remains have
been found, but, as yet, no perfect skull has been found. There were two
types of man, the Dolicho Cephalous, or long-headed, and the Brachy
Cephalous, or round-headed--and, of these, the long-headed were of far
greater antiquity.
All we can do is to classify man’s habitation of this earth, as well as
we can, under certain well-defined, and known conditions. Thus, that
called the Stone Age, must be divided into two parts, that of the
roughly chipped flint implements--which is designated the _Palæolithic_
period--and that of the polished and carefully finished stone arms and
implements, which necessarily show a later time, and a higher state of
civilisation--which is called the _Neolithic_ period. The next age is
that of bronze, when man had learned to smelt metals, and make moulds,
showing a great advance--and, finally, the Iron Age, in which man had
subdued the sterner metal to his will--and this age immediately precedes
History.
The cave men were of undoubted antiquity--and were hunters of the wild
beasts that then overran Western Europe, and who split the bones of
those animals which they slew in order to obtain the marrow. Although
strictly belonging to the Palæolithic period, they manufactured out of
that stubborn material, flint, spear-heads, knives, scrapers--and, when
the bow had been invented, arrow-heads. Nor were they deficient in the
rudiments of art, as some tracings and carvings on pieces of the horns
of slaughtered animals, clearly show. Mr. Christie in digging in the
Dordogne caves found, at La Madelaine, engraved and carved pictures of
reindeer, an ibex, a mammoth, &c., all of them recognisable, and the
mammoth, a very good likeness. This was incised on a piece of mammoth
tusk.
The lake men, judging by the remains found near their dwellings,
occupied their houses during the Stone and Bronze periods. Herodotus
mentions these curious dwellings. “But those around Mount Pangæus and
near the Doberes, the Agrianæ, Odomanti, and those who inhabit Lake
Prasias[23] itself, were not at all subdued by Megabazus. Yet he
attempted to conquer those who live upon the lake, in dwellings
contrived after this manner: planks, fitted on lofty piles, are placed
in the middle of the lake, with a narrow entrance from the mainland by
a single bridge. These piles that support the planks, all the citizens
anciently placed there at the common charge; but, afterwards, they
established a law to the following effect; whenever a man marries, for
each wife he sinks three piles, bringing wood from a mountain called
Orbelus; but every man has several wives. They live in the following
manner; every man has a hut on the planks, in which he dwells, with a
trap door closely fitted in the planks, and leading down to the lake.
They tie the young children with a cord round the foot, fearing lest
they should fall into the lake beneath. To their horses and beasts of
burden they give fish for fodder; of which there is such an abundance,
that, when a man has opened his trap-door, he lets down an empty basket
by a cord into the lake, and, after waiting a short time, draws it up
full of fish.”[24]
Here, then, we have a valuable record of the lake dwellings, and similar
ones have been found in the lake of Zurich. In 1854, owing to the
dryness and cold of the preceding winter, the water fell a foot below
any previous record: and, in a small bay between Ober Meilen and
Dollikon, the inhabitants took advantage to reclaim the soil thus left,
and add it to their gardens, by building a wall as far out as they
could--and they raised the level of the land thus gained, by dredging
the mud out of the lake. In the course of dredging they found deer
horns, tiles and various implements, and, the attention of an antiquary
having been directed to this find, he concluded that it was the site of
an ancient lake village. The lakes of Geneva, Constance, and
Neufchatel, have also yielded much that throws light on the habits and
intelligence of these lake men. They wove, they made pottery, they grew
and parched corn--nay they ground it, and made biscuits, they ate
apples, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, hazel and beech nuts,
and peas. They evidently fed on cereals, fruit, fish, and the flesh of
wild animals, for bones of the following animals have been found. Brown
bear, badger, marten, pine marten, polecat, wolf, fox, wild cat, beaver,
elk, urus, bison, stag, roe-deer, wild boar, marsh boar--whilst their
domestic animals were the boar, horse, ox, goat, sheep, and dog. These,
it must be remembered, range over a wide period, including the stone and
bronze ages. They wore ornaments, too, for pins, and bracelets have been
found. Lake dwellings have been found in Scotland, England, Italy,
Germany and France--so that this practice seems to have obtained very
widely. In Ireland they made artificial islands in the lakes, called
Crannoges, on which they erected their dwellings. Pile dwellings now
exist, and are inhabited in many parts of the world.
We have other traces of prehistoric man in the shell mounds,
kjökkenmöddings, or kitchen middens, which still exist in Denmark, and
have been found in Scotland on the shores of the Moray Firth and Loch
Spynie; in Cornwall, and Devon, at St. Valéry at the mouth of the Somme,
in Australia, Tierra del Fuego, the Malay Peninsula, the Andaman
Islands, and North and South America, showing a very wide range. The
Danish kjökkenmöddings, when first thoroughly noticed, (of course, in
this century), were taken to be raised beaches--but when they were
examined, it was found that the shells were of four species of molluscs
or shell-fish,[25] that did not live together, and that they were
either full-grown, or nearly so. A stricter examination was made, and
the result was the finding of some flint implements, and bones marked by
knives, conclusively showing that man had had a hand in this collection
of shells--and the conclusion was come to that these were the sites of
villages of a prehistoric man, a hypothesis which was fully borne out by
the discovery, in some of them, of hearths bearing traces of having
borne fire. Thus, then, these refuse heaps were clearly the work of a
very ancient race, so poor, and backward, as to be obliged to live on
shell-fish--and these mounds were made by the shells which they threw
away.
We can find a very great analogy between them and the Tierra del
Fuegans, when Darwin visited them, while with the surveying ships
_Adventure_ and _Beagle_, a voyage which took from 1832 to 1836; and,
when we read the following extracts from Darwin’s account of the
expedition, we can fancy we have before us a vivid picture of the makers
of the kitchen middens. “The inhabitants, living chiefly upon
shell-fish, are obliged constantly to change their place of residence;
but they return at intervals to the same spots, as is evident from the
pile of old shells, which must often amount to some tons in weight.
These heaps can be distinguished at a long distance by the bright green
colour of certain plants which invariably grow on them.... The Fuegian
wigwam resembles, in size and dimensions, a haycock. It merely consists
of a few broken branches stuck in the ground, and very imperfectly
thatched on one side, with a few tufts of grass and rushes. The whole
cannot be so much as the work of an hour, and it is only used for a few
days.... At a subsequent period, the _Beagle_ anchored for a couple of
days under Wollaston Island, which is a short way to the northward.
While going on shore, we pulled alongside a canoe with six Fuegians.
These were the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld. On
the east coast, the natives, as we have seen, have guanaco cloaks, and,
on the west, they possess sealskins. Amongst the central tribes the men
generally possess an otter skin, or some small scrap about as large as a
pocket handkerchief, which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as
low down as their loins. It is laced across the breast by strings, and,
according as the wind blows, it is shifted from side to side. But these
Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one full-grown woman
was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the fresh water, together
with the spray, trickled down her body.... These poor wretches were
stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint,
their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices
discordant, their gestures violent and without dignity. Viewing such
men, one can hardly make oneself believe they are fellow-creatures and
inhabitants of the same world.... At night, five or six human beings,
naked, and scarcely protected from the wind and rain of this tempestuous
climate, sleep on the wet ground, coiled up like animals. Whenever it is
low water, they must rise to pick shell-fish from the rocks; and the
women, winter and summer, either dive and collect sea eggs, or sit
patiently in their canoes, and, with a baited hair line, jerk out small
fish. If a seal is killed, or the floating carcase of a putrid whale
discovered, it is a feast: such miserable food is assisted by a few
tasteless berries, and fungi. Nor are they exempt from famine, and, as a
consequence, cannibalism accompanied by parricide.”
This I believe to be as faithful a picture as can be drawn of the makers
of the shell mounds.
But in Denmark, although shells formed by far the major part of these
middens, yet they ate other fish, the herring, dorse, dab, and eel.
Birds also were not despised by them, bones of swallows, the sparrow,
stork, capercailzie, ducks, geese, wild swans, and even of the great auk
(now extinct) have been found. Then of beasts they ate the stag,
roe-deer, wild boar, urus, dog, fox, wolf, marten, otter, lynx, wild
cat, hedgehog, bear, and mouse; beside which they lived on the seal,
porpoise, and water rat.
Owing to the almost total absence of polished implements--and yet the
fact being that portions of one or two have been found--the makers of
these kjökkenmöddings, are classed as belonging to the later Palæolithic
period.
Of the Bronze and Iron Ages there is no necessity to write, men were
emerging from their primæval barbarity--and all the gentle arts, though
undeveloped, were nascent. Men who could smelt metals, and mould, and
forge them, cannot be considered as utter barbarians, such as were the
long-headed men, with their chipped flint implements and weapons.
WILD MEN.
Sometimes a specimen of humanity has got astray in infancy, and has been
dragged up somehow in the woods, like Caspar Hauser, and Peter the Wild
Boy, and fiction supplies other instances, such as Romulus and Remus,
Orson, &c. Some of them were credited with being hairy as are the
accompanying wild man and woman, as they are portrayed in John Sluper’s
book, where they are thus described:--
[Illustration]
“L’HOMME SAUVAGE.
“Combien que Dieu le createur seul sage,
A fait user les hommes de raison:
Icy voyez un vray homme sauvage,
Son corps vela est en toute saison.”
[Illustration]
“LA FEMME SAUVAGE.
“Femme sauvage a l’œil humain, non sainte,
Ainsi qu’elle est sur le naturel lieu,
Au naturel vous est icy depeinte,
Comme voyez qu’il appert a votre vue.”
When Cæsar came to Britain for the second time, he found the Britons,
although to a great extent civilised, having cavalry and charioteers (so
many of the latter, that Cassivelaunus left about 4000 to watch the
Romans), and knowing the art of fortification, yet in themselves, only
just emerging from utter barbarism--the colouring and shaving of
themselves showed that they had vanity, and were making, after their
fashion, the most of their personal charms. Cæsar (Book v. 14) writes:
“Of all these _tribes_, by far the most civilised are those who inhabit
Kent, which district is altogether maritime; nor do they differ much
from the Gallic customs. Most of those in the interior do not sow corn,
but live on flesh and milk, and are clad in skins. All the Britons, in
truth, dye themselves with woad, which produces a bluish colour, and on
this account they are of a more frightful aspect in battle. They have
flowing hair, and every part of the body shaved, except the head and the
upper lip. Ten, and _even_ twelve of them have wives in common between
them, and chiefly brothers with brothers, and fathers with sons; but, if
there is any offspring, they are considered to be the children of those
by whom each virgin was first espoused.”
HAIRY MEN.
If, as we may conjecture from the above, the ancient Briton was “a
rugged man, o’ergrown with hair,” his full-dress toilette must have
occupied some time. But extreme hairiness in human beings is by no means
singular, and very many cases are recorded in medical books. Many of us
may remember the Spanish dancer, Julia Pastrana, whose whole body was
hairy, and who had a fine beard. She had a child on whom the hair began
to grow, like its mother; and, but a few years back, there was a hairy
family exhibited in London--their faces being covered with hair, as is
the case of the _Puella pilosa_, or Hairy Girl--given by Aldrovandus in
his _Monstrorum Historia_.
[Illustration]