Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 September 1876 — The African Pigmies. [ARTICLE]

The African Pigmies.

I have received some accounts of the African pigmies who are now receiving an education in Italy, which, no doubt, will interest persons who remember the acurate dcscrition made of them by Bayard Taylor when they were first captured, three years ago. The English Geographical Society then Asserted that they were incapable of instruction, and that they were not much superior to orang-outangs; but the experience of the last three years has proved that they are intelligent, affectionate and grateful. They already speak Italian with elegance and clearness of enunciation, and read and write with facility. Their hand writing is good, and their thoughts are expressed in their written compositions with clearness and simplicity and with wonderful originality. They also read Latin with comprehension and intelligence. The eldest, Tibe Tukuba, studies arithmetic and adds, subtracts and multiplies mentally. He also has a passionate love for music, and from hearing the lessons on the piano given to others is able to repeat them by ear. The Countess Miniscalclii, under whose care the King has placed them, will have him instructed in music.

6he has placed both children under the tuition of an excellent teacher and his wife, who spare no pains to develop their intellectual faculties. Great patience was required to teach the little savages, and Signora Scarabcllo, to whom the success is greatly due, merits great praise. She has taught them on the Froebel system, by means of objects which they could see or touch, and also by appealing to their appetites with sweetmeats or fruits. Counting on the fingers or out of an arithmetic, is a very different thing from enumerating apples and oranges, which are to be transferred to the pupil's keeping, or sugar Elums which arc destined to disappear in is own pocket, and her method has succeeded admirably with these children. In order to discover to what part of Africa their tribe belonged she has shown them pictures of all the animals of tropickl regions. They recognized the tiger, goat, serpent and ostrich, but had never seen a horse in their native regions. At the sight of a picture of the tiger Tibo related that in his country the animal is chased, and its raw flesh* still bleeding, eaten with relish by the tribe. In one of these chases his village was attacked by a hostile tribe, which stole his mother, killed, roasted and eat her. The Akkas were baptized in the Roman Catholic Church £t Verona, the certificate saying they were of unknown birth and under the patronage of Victor Emanuel. They have grown a little since their arrival in Italy, but are still unmistakably of a dwarfed race. The elder is of a mild and sensitive disposition, frank, noble, patient and reflective, and has readily yielded to civilization. The younger still retains some of his original savage nature, and is less expansive, but yet very affectionate and grateful to his Rome Cor. N. Y. Evening Post. _