HALIBURTON, Robert Grant.

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The Dwarfs of Mount Atlas. First edition, espousing Haliburton's belief that there was a race of dwarves living in the Moroccan mountains. He argues that they were descended from Herodotus's "troglodytae", were under four feet tall, and had been kept secret for 3,000 years. His ideas were almost immediately derided as nonsensical in letters to the The Times and the Times of Morocco.Haliburton (1831-1901) was a race scientist, English supremacist, and one of the founders of the Canada First movement. He spent his later life focused on the anthropology of North Africa. He put forward his theories about the Atlas mountain dwarves at the Oriental Congress on 2 September 1891, which was fully reported in the The Times on the same day. Some letters in the aftermath supported him, such as one from the traveller and socialite Walter Burton Harris, but the majority lambasted his claims as unevidenced. A significant voice in the debate was James Edward Budgett Meakin, the son of the founder of the Times of Morocco. Haliburton's paper was subsequently refused publication in the Transactions of the Oriental Congress.

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