Yorkville enquirer. [volume] (Yorkville, S.C.) 1855-2006, 1907-06-18
PIGMIEs MUCH LIKE APES.


tons in the Congo Free State has just
been published. He adopted the un-
usual plan of keeping away from the
beaten paths and the main lines Of
communication as much as possible.
He covered about 3,400 miles-a
large part of the way on foot or in
native canoes manned by blacks
whom he picked up at the villages.
He has nothing to say Of the hack
neyed and writes only of peoples who
are not yet we'll known to readers Of
African literature.
He followed, to be sure, one well
travelled route, the Ubangi river, the
largest tributary of the Congo; but
what he has to say about the Ubangi
tribes is new. 1t is a curious fact that
though some of the most 1ourishing
stations of the whites are scattered
along this great river scarcely a book
has been written that even mentions
these leading tribes.
MountmoTes has now supplied the
lacking information. He also pushed
far through the great tropical forest
and came across the lowest type Of
pygmies, Of whom we had previously
heard only vague reports. Mount
morres in fact saw them only for a
minute, but he is the first writer who
has seen them all.
He was forcing his way through
the dense forest when some tiny ar
rows fell close to him and looking up
in the trees he saw what seemed to be
a number of chimpanzees springing
from branch to branch and then stop
ping to look at the intruder, after the
manner of the larger apes. He thinks
that none Of them were over three
feet nine inches in height.
They were entirely naked, had feat
ures as fiat and foreheads as receding
as the chimpanzee and, II it were not
for their use of the bow and arrow,
they would be taken for apes. They
showed their teeth and iabbered just
as apes do, and it was difficult to i'm
agine that the noises they emitted
could form an intelligent language.
All we had heard of them was that
they live in the trees. The explorer
had no opportunity to investigate this
question, for he would have been
compelled to fire on the pygmies in
self defence II he had remained under
those trees
Mr.. Wieslet, a state official, told
him that he had broken in upon a
group of these strange little people
in exactly the same way, and he as
sured the explorer that he had seen
their habitations, which consist OF
shelters in the forks of the trees made
by plating the smaller boughs to-
gether. Another white man in the
peighborhood also told him that he
had seen them retreating into just
such shelters as Mr.. Weislet de-
scribed.
AS for Mountmorres, he was so busy
watching the little men and women
springing from one branch to anoth-
er with the agility Of monkeys that
1t did not occur to him to look for
any shelters.
The most remarkable feature Of the
Dongo cannibals on the lower Ubangi
is their prolificness. A family or
twenty wives and fourscore children
is by no means a rarity, and some
times a man brings forward over a
hundred of his own offspring.
AS the state has full control over
them they can no longer indulge In
cannibal practices, though they still
declare that human meat Is prefer
able to all others and the flesh Of the
white man is superior to that OF the
black, because it has a slightly salt
ish taste. They say they know be-
cause they ate a white man ten years
ago. These are the people who re-
fused to sell vegetable food to the
first explorers that visited them except
in exchange for men to eat.
Mountmorres says there is a re-
markable difference between the for
est dwellers and those who live on the
plain. The forest people, living In
perpetual twilight and skulking along
their game tracks, are the most prim-
tive of human beings; while the plain
dwellers, in the full glare Of day, lus-
ty and intelligent, busy themselves
with numberless crafts and indus
tries.
He found the Banza tribe Of the
upper Ubangi distinguished for phys
ical beauty and with an indigenous
civilization for which they owe moth
ing either to the whites or the Arabs.
Their chiefs have high intelligence
and quick reasoning powers and are
very apt in retort.
Each village has a maternity home
to which prospective mothers are sent
for comforts and conveniences that
they do not have at home. AS the
care of young children tends to keep
many wives from their work the lit
tie ones are placed together in large
shady places surrounded with mesh
ed nets and women are assigned to
look after them. Their industries are
numerous and quite highly developed
and the American white potato Is
now one of their field crops.
In the areas set apart as rubber
concessions, where the blacks have
been maltreated and in few other
districts where they seldom meet
white men, the natives fled at the ex-
plorer's approach, but everywhere
else he was received with the greatest
friendliness. All along the Ubangi the
inhabitants came fiocking down to
the waters edge, shouting and cheer
ing as soon as the approach Of the
white mans canoe was announced.
They gave him many presents Of
food, and men eagerly volunteered for
the work of padding his canoe to the
next village. He found also that in
the northeastern part Of the Congo
state many of the tribes are coming
under the Arab influence and the raw
natives are rapidly taking on more
civilized habits of life. This writer,
in fact, takes a very hopeful view Of