THE PYGMIES OF THE GREAT OGNGO FOREST. 489 



at home. Seeniiiig-lj they have only kiu)wii the une of metal (iron) by 

 their contact with negroes of .superior i*ace. Before this contact they 

 seeni to have used weapons and iiuplenients of wood, possibly also of 

 ston(\ iM'cn at the present day tliey not infrequent!}' use wooden 

 arroNvs. 



Their huts are about -t feet high and about -i feet in diameter, and 

 are usually built of withes or l)ranches stuck into the ground at ])oth 

 ends, in a semicircle. Over this framework of l)ent l>oughs a thatch 

 of large leaves is laid on, and a small hole is left at the side, through 

 which the little pigui.v crawls in to lie on his bed of leaves. The hus- 

 band and wife (they seldom marry more than one wife) may share the 

 same hut, but the children as soon as they have left the breast are put 

 each into little huts l)}- themselves. Some of those tiny habitations are 

 absurdh' small. 



NO LANGUAGE OF THEIK OWN. 



The dwarfs appear to hav«* no language of theii- own, ))ut simply to 

 talk more or less imperfectly the tongue of the l)ig negroes who are 

 their nearest neighbors. Thus the dwarfs whom Stanley encountered 

 on his various journeys across C'ongoland were always found to ))e 

 speaking corrupt P)antu dialects, or in one instance a language scarcelv 

 difi'ering fi'om ^lanyema. Tludr pronunciation of these languages is 

 imj)erfect, and they are uuich given to replacing certain consonants 

 by little gasps, and sometimes by a sound which faintly recalls the 

 South African click. They speak with a singularly uuisical intonation, 

 their speech being almost intoned. Their pronunciation of words is 

 rather staccato, each syllable l.)eing pronounced separately and dis- 

 tinctly. •'• ■" ■'• 



It is, of course, a hard thing to believe that prior to the invasion of 

 the great west central African forest ])y the l)ig black agricultural 

 negroes the pygiiiy autochthones possessed no language but inarticulate 

 cries and gestures." Nevertheless, it would seem to be a fact that the 

 pygmies, though so distinct a race, have no language peculiar to their 

 race, but, wherever they are, speak (often imperfectly) the tongue of 

 their nearest agricultural, settled, normal-sized neighbors. Again, it 

 is strange that this little people should speak impcn'fectly these bor- 

 rowed tongues, because individuals transported from the pigmy milieu 

 have picked up rapidly and spoken correctly Sudanese Arabic, Kun- 

 yoro, Luganda, Kiswahili, and Kinyaiuwezi. ]t is, however, l(\ss sin- 

 gular an anomaly than the contrast between the brutish lives led hy 

 the pyguiies in their wild state — lives, perhaps, in al)sence of human 

 culture nearer to the beast than is the case with any recently existing 



« I was much Htruck, and so were my European companiojis, at t]\v expn'ssive ges- 

 tures used by the pygiuics in eking out tlieir conversation. One often conversed 

 with theiu in gestures. 



