The inland parts, in some places of the coast of Coromandel, toward the hills, are covered with immense and impenetrable forests, which afford a shelter for all sort of wild beasts: but, in that which forms the inland-boundary of the Carnatic rajahs dominions, there is one singular species of creatures, of which Mr. Grose, the author of "A voyage to the East-Indies," performed, by himself, in the year 1750, (the second edition whereof was published, by the writer, at London, in 1772, in two volumes, octavo,) had heard much in India, and of the truth of which, he says, the following fact that happened sometime before his arrival there, may serve for an attestation:
Vencajee, a merchant of that country, and an inhabitant on the sea-coast, sent up to Bombay, to the then governor of it, mr. Horne, a couple of these creatures, as a present, by a coasting vessel,
of them in 1549: Edin. 1784, 12mo. p. 37. See a defence of the existence of the Pygmies, in Rosses Arcana microcosmi, London, 1652, p. 106. Martin, likewise, in his Description of the Western islands of Scotland, 1703, p. 19, says, The island of Pigmies, or, as the natives call it, The island of little men, is but of small extent. There have been many small bones dug out of the ground here, resembling those of human kind more than any other. This, he adds, gave ground to a tradition, which the natives have of a very low-statured people living once here, called Lusbirdan, that is pygmies.
