The Hima and Tusi are people who live among the Bantu as rulers, the purest of them perhaps in Mpororo. Spatially they are very widespread but in most groups they are limited to single families. They have always been much concerned to keep their blood pure and have practically never taken native women into their sibs. On that account they have in many cases preserved their original type quite wonderfully. . . . Many of them look precisely like the old Egyptians and the examination of a large number of good photographs always leaves the impression that the old Pharaohs. have risen from their graves. . . . The extraordinary height of the Hima is very striking. Anthropometric data are not at hand but we know from provisional reports that the Hima are doubtless the tallest people in the world—considerably taller than the Scotch. Individuals of 190 cm. and over are not at all uncommon and attract no notice. The extremities alone are not responsible for this extraordinary height; the trunk is also nearly always uncannily long and very thin and narrow. I can never examine the collection of photographs by Weiss without wonder and speculation as to the seat of the viscera. There are individuals whose stomach cannot be distinguished in a transverse direction but must lie along the body axis, as in the case of snakes. Among the Hima, as among the celebrated tall groups in the eastern Sudan, there must have been for generations a more or less conscious and continuous principle of breeding—breeding for height.³

¹Gutmann, B.n/an/an/an/an/a, , 249–250 (C. H. Bech’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. By permission).

²Ibid., 499, 500.

³ Luschan, F. von, "Hamitische Typen," supplement to Meiahof, C., op. cit., 250–252.