348 AFRICA SPEAKS 



The pygmies are very careful of their women, never 

 parting with them to anyone outside of their own tribe, 

 except in exchange for a rifle I The Belgians do not 

 prohibit guns to the natives as do the British, and I 

 often met naked savages walking along the paths carry- 

 ing an old muzzle-loader. One pygmy subchief had 

 such a weapon. It was a relic of many decades ago, 

 being a large smoothbore with flintlock, without any 

 fhnt. This gun had not been fired for many years, but 

 the chief never went anywhere without it, a small boy 

 proudly bearing it behind him on all occasions. 



The pygmy men wear a covering of bark cloth, while 

 the women get along with a girdle of leaves. The cloth 

 is prepared by the wives, who strip the bark from a cer- 

 tain tree and, after soaking it in a stream, beat it out 

 with ivory hammers. Judging by the appearance of 

 some of this material, which I noticed on the men, it 

 must wear very well. They never wash it and maybe 

 the additions of grease and the curing properties of 

 smoke from the camp fires preserve and toughen it. 



The women sport two or three new dresses every day, 

 or whenever their fancy dictates. Little groups go out 

 forest shopping, presently returning with fresh leaves 

 hung around their waists, suspended from a vine. After 

 running around in the sun for a wliile, the leaves dry 

 up and shrink, making another trip necessary to the 

 dress section of this huge outdoor department store. 

 Unless the cHmate changes a great deal, the pygmy 

 women will never want for a plentiful supply of clothes, 

 nor will their husband's dry-goods' biU ever be a cause 

 for worry. 



It was dusk. The chiefs, to whom I had been talk- 

 ing through my interpreter, had left, and going to the 



