AMONG THE PYGMIES 33 



themselves, most of which he answered with marvel- 

 lous intelligence, speaking in a rapid, sing-song way. 

 I asked him the extent of the forest, as occupied by 

 the Pygmies, and he described the distance by telling 

 me the number of days it would take to pass through : 

 from east to west seven days, and from north to south 

 about six days, and, roughly speaking, about one 

 hundred and forty by one hundred and twenty miles 

 broad that is, counting twenty miles as an average 

 day's march, which would be fairly good walking even 

 for a native of the forest. I next asked him the 

 number of his people, and he took a piece of stick 

 and broke it up into little pieces, about forty in all, 

 and said that each piece represented a chief ; and he 

 then went on to tell me the number of followers of 

 each some had two hundred, others only fifty, and a 

 few as many as five hundred. It was very simple then 

 to calculate that the total number would be somewhere 

 about ten thousand. 



Then the Pygmy chief told me that he knew long 

 ago of my coming, and I asked him ' How? ' He 

 said that several days ago he saw me. ' Saw me? ' 

 I said ; ' when did you see me? ' 'I have seen 

 you in the forest for six days.' ' But I did not see 

 you/ I said ; and then he laughed most heartily and 

 said, ' No, I could not see him, but he saw me.' 

 Upon further inquiry I found that a large party of 

 these little creatures had been watching our every move- 

 ment through the forest, while we were in the most 

 blissful ignorance of the fact. At every camp they 

 had hovered about us, peering at us through the thicket 

 as we passed. Why did they not attack us? is the 

 question that kept coming into my mind. If they 



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