SOURCE: At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs (All-Story Weekly, April 4-25, 1914)

DESCRIPTION:"Our guards, whom I already have described as gorilla-like men, were rather lighter in build than a gorilla, but even so they were indeed mighty creatures. Their arms and legs were proportioned more in conformity with human standards, but their entire bodies were covered with shaggy, brown hair, and their faces were quite as brutal as those of the few stuffed specimens of the gorilla which I had seen in the museums at home.
Their only redeeming feature lay in the development of the head above and back of the ears. In this respect they were not one whit less human than we. They were clothed in a sort of tunic of light cloth which reached to the knees. Beneath this they wore only a loin cloth of the same material, while their feet were shod with thick hide of some mammoth creature of this inner world.Their arms and necks were encircled by many ornaments of metal—silver predominating—and on their tunics were sewn the heads of tiny reptiles in odd and rather artistic designs. They talked among themselves as they marched along on either side of us, but in a language which I perceived differed from that employed by our fellow prisoners. When they addressed the latter they used what appeared to be a third language, and which I later learned is a mongrel tongue rather analogous to the Pidgin-English of the Chinese coolie..." (At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs)

NOTES: The Sagoths are the intermediaries of the Mahars. They can communicate with them by way of a pidgeon tongue.

HISTORY: Burroughs has many varieties of apemen in Pellucidar. The Sagoths are his version of the neanderthal. Robert E. Howard used the word "Sagoth" in the name of a city/island "Bal-Sagoth" in 1931.