PYGMIES Mount Pisgah ; they are called Wambutti, but are also known by the names of Batvva, Akka, and Bazungu. They live in the Equatorial forest and support themselves on game, which they are very expert in catching. They vary in height from 3 feet to 4 feet 6 inches. A full-grown male may weigh ninety pounds. They shoot arrows, the tips of which are thickly coated with poison, from their little bows, and they are adepts in the use of the spear. They are such expert huntsmen that no game would be left in the forest round about them in a short time, and they are therefore compelled to move to other settlements so soon as game becomes scarce. They kill elephants for their ivory, birds for their feathers, and they collect honey from the woods, and traffic largely in poison. Every road from any direction runs through their camps, and their villages command every cross-way.

They are more crafty and cunning than the tribes of men of larger stature among whom they live, and their wonderful methods of collecting intelligence enable them to know of the coming of strangers long before their neighbours. They arrange their dwellings in a circle, with an open space for the chiefs hut in the centre ; these dwellings are in the form of an oval cut lengthways, and have doors, 2 or 3 feet high at the ends. On each track leading from their villages, about 100 yards in advance, is a sentry house which is just large enough to hold two pygmies, and its doorwa} faces the track.

Stanley distinguishes two species of pygmies, the Batwa and the Wambutti : the former have longish heads, long narrow faces, and round reddish eyes set close together, and the latter have round faces, gazelle-like eyes, set far apart, and open foreheads which give one an impression of undisguised frankness, and are of a rich yellow, ivory complexion. The Wambutti live in the southern part of the great Equatorial forest, and the Batwa in the northern, and extend to the Awamba forests, which lie on both banks of the Semliki River, and east of the Ituri. The Semliki River leaves Lake Albert Edward, near its north-western corner, in lat. o 8' 30" south, and it discharges its waters into the south end of Lake Albert Nyanza in lat. 1° 9' north. Assuming now, 1 Sir W. Garstin, Report upoti the Basin of the Upper Nile, p. 65. Cairo, 1904.

525