Of the lande of Pygmen,¹ wherein dwell but smal people of three spanne long.

WHEN men passe from that citie of Chibens, they passe over a great river of freshe water, and it is nere IIII mile brode & then men enter into the lande of the great Caan. This river goeth through the land of Pigmeens, and there men are of little stature for they are but three span long, and they are right fayre bothe men and women, though they bee little, and they are wedded when they are halfe a yere olde, and they live but viii² yeare, and he that liveth viii yeare is holden right olde, and these small men are the best workemen in sylke and of cotton in all maner of thing that are in the worlde, and these smal men travail not nor tyl land but they haue amonge them great men, as we are, to travaill for them & they haue great scorne of those great men, as we would haue of giaunts or of them if they were among us.

1: 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 t?e??, three, and sp??a?, 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."

2: Other editions say six or seven years.