"So when inclement winters vex the plain
With piercing frosts or thick-descending rain,
To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,
With noise and order, through the midway sky;
To Pigmy nations wounds and death they bring,
And all the war descends upon the wing."
Attention may here be drawn to Tyson's quotation (p. 78) from Vossius as
to the trade driven by the Pigmies in elephants' tusks, since, as we have
seen, this corresponds with what we now know as to the habits of the
Akkas.
The account which Herodotus gives of the expedition of the Nasamonians is
well known. Five men, chosen by lot 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.
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