Note 1 — CAP. LXIII.

: Pigmies, dwarfs. Homer, in the third book of the Iliad, has immortalized the Pigmies and their battles with the Cranes. (See Appendix for a curious engraving.) Pliny, in his 7th Book, cap. 2, speaks thus of them: "Beyond these people, and at the very extremity of the mountains, the Trispithami (from τρεῖς, three, and σπιθαμὶ, spans), and the Pigmies are said to exist; two races that are but three spans in height—that is to say, twenty-seven inches only. They enjoy a salubrious atmosphere and a perpetual spring, being sheltered by the mountains from the northern blasts: it is these people that Homer has mentioned as being waged war upon by cranes. It is said that they are in the habit of going down, every spring, to the sea shore in a large body, seated on the backs of rams and goats, and armed with arrows, and there destroy the eggs and the young of those birds; that this expedition occupies them for the space of three months, and that otherwise it would be impossible for them to withstand the increasing multitudes of the cranes. Their cabins, it is said, are built of mud, mixed with feathers and egg-shells. Aristotle, indeed, says that they dwell in caves; but, in other respects, he gives the same details as other writers."