PYGMIES AND FOREST NEGROES 



545 



abundant and powerful in former times, and inhabited many regions alono- 

 the water-parting of the basins of the Congo and the Nile, where they are 

 no longer seen. The belief of the present writer is, as already expressed, 

 that the black Negroes of ordinary stature, who entered Africa from the 

 direction of Arabia after the invasion of the continent by a dwarf yellowish 

 Negro type, spread at first due west from the Nile to the west coast of 

 Africa, and due south beyond the Nile sources down the eastern half 

 of Africa, being for a long time repelled from any south-western extension 

 by the dense forests of the Congo basin and of that part of the Nile 

 watershed abutting thereon. The pressure of Hamitic and negroid races 

 from the north and north-east forced in time the big black Negroes to 

 advance into the Congo Forest from various points : from Tanganyika and 

 its northern Rift Valley, westwards and north-westwards; from the basin 

 of the Shari and the region of the Bahr-al-Clhazal, southwards and south- 

 eastwards. 



The best distinction to draw between the full-sized agricultural forest 

 negroes on the one hand and the Pygmy-Prognathous negroes on the other- 

 is that the former till the soil and cultivate food plants, are " agricultural " ; 



300. PYGMY WEAPONS AND IMPLEMENTS : DAGGER AND SCABBARD, KNIVES, CHOPPER, ARROWS AND 

 QUIVER, A SOFT LEATHER PAD OR GLOVE TO GUARD LEFT HAND WHEN THE ARROW IS BEING 

 SHOT FROM THE BOW, BOW AND ARROWS 



and the others are not. These agricultural negroes are of decidedly mixed 

 stock, some of them showing traces of the recent infusion of Hamitic blood, 

 side by side with Pygmy-Prognathous characteristics; many belonging to 



