THE ACEPHALI. 199 and that in the breast. It is extremely difficult to ascertain the origin of these reports, which are so involved in metaphor that the signification is not intelligible to Europeans 5 their existence is not doubted, however, in Africa. Of the Hel El Killeb some ignorant people affirm that the Almighty transformed one of the tribes of the Jews into these people, and that these are their descendants ; others report them to be a mongrel breed, between the human and ape species ; their strength is said to be very great. The Africans assert with considerable confidence, which is corroborated, that the Hel Shual have a tail half a cubit long ; that they inhabit a district in the Desert at an immense distance south-east of Marocco ; that the Hel El Killeb "" are in a having one eye, and that in their chest, says, " There is in Canibar a race of savages who have hardly any neck, and whose shoulders reacli up to their ears. This monstrous appearance is artificial, and to give it to their children they put enormous weights upon their heads, so as to n.dr:e the vertebrae of the neck enter, if we may so say, the channel bone, (clavicule.) These barbarians, from a distance, seem to have their mouth in the breast ; and might well enough, in ignorant and enthusiastic travellers, serve to revive the fable of the Acephali, or men without heads." (See Larcher's Notes on Herodotus's Melpomene, cap. 191.)— Saint Augustin, whose veracity is scarcely to be doubted, declared in his thirty-third sermon, intituled " A ses Freres dmis Ic Deserty'—" Avoir vii en Ethiopie des homines et desjemmes sans te avec des grands yeux sur le poitrine.

* We have heard of a pig-faced lady ; if there ih such a o 4