Chap. XIII. DESCRIPTION OP THE APONO TRIBE. 2oo 



of the tribe ; their villages were numerous 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 two 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-brows, and 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 as 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 

 eeem 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 warlike people, and are rather 

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



