Chap. XIIT. DESCRIPTION OF THE APONO TPJBE. 255 



of tlie tril)e ; their villages were nuraeroiis along our 

 line of march from Mouendi, but we travelled pro- 

 bably through the most thickly-peopled district. 



As I have already said, the Aponos, both men and 

 women, are distinguished by their habit of taking- 

 out the tw^o middle upper incisors and filing the rest, 

 as well as the four lower, to a point. ''The women 

 have for ornament tattooed scars on their forehead ; 

 very often these consist of nine rounded prominences 

 similar in size to peas, and arranged in the form of 

 a lozenge between their eye-brow^§/a'ncl they have 

 similar raised marks on their cheeks and a few 

 irregular marks on the chest and abdomen, varying 

 in pattern in different individuals. They also rub 

 themselves with red powder derived from the common 

 bar-wood of trade. /They dress their hair in many 

 ways, but never form it into a high mass/ias the 

 Ashira used formerly to do, as I have described in 

 ' Equatorial Africa.' The Aponos do not practise 

 tattooing so much as the Apingi, who decorate their 

 chests and abdomens with various kinds of raised 

 patterns. I once asked an Apingi man why his 

 people covered themselves with such ugly scars ; he 

 replied that they were the same as clothing to 

 them. " Why," retorted he, " do you cover your- 

 self with so many curious garments?" The Apingi 

 seem to be a small tribe, and the territory they 

 occupy is a narrow strip along the banks of the 

 Ngouyai. They and the Ishogos speak the same 

 language. 



The Aponos are a w^arlike people, and are rather 

 looked up to with fear by the Apingi and the Ishogos, 



