Note 129 — V. HERE FOLLOWETH CONCERNING INDIA THE GREATER.

Polo, in one chapter on Sumatra, tells how stuffed pygmies were manufactured for the western markets by shaving monkeys, “for neither in India, nor in any other country however savage, are there men so small as these pretended ones.” Yet, in another chapter, his incredulity gives way, and he tells of hairy men with tails, who remain in the mountains, never visiting the towns. No doubt the orang-utang, which exists in Sumatra, is at the bottom of these pygmy stories. The pygmies and cannibals together identify Sumatra as the scene of one of Sindbad’s adventures; not the Andamans, as a reviewer in the Athenæum lately said.