412 



and no game is too large for them to engage. Their whole Hfe is founded on 

 a complete knowledge and acute observation of the plant and animal life in 

 their own region. Their weapons are almost exclusively the bow and arrow, 

 which among the African tribes are quite small. Among the Akkas the arrow 

 is tipped with pieces of bone or borrowed iron and feathered with a strip of palm 

 leaf. The African races poison their arrows, and, according to Stanley and 

 others, the poisons used by the Equatorial Pigmies are astonishingly quick and 

 deadly. The arrow poison of the Bushmen, partly vegetable (Euphorbia and 

 Amaryllis) and party animal, is also deadly to the ostrich and large ungulates. 

 In the Andaman Islands a peculiar form of bow is met with which has the 

 form of an S and is nearly as high as the archer himself. The arrows of this 

 race are not poisoned. 



Being, as a rule, ignorant of pottery (except among the Andamanese), the 

 preparation of food is mostly by baking. The food, in all races, includes every- 

 thing edible in the animal and vegetable world. Everything that will provide 

 protein is utilized on occasion. The Bushmen will even eat hyaenas, and their 

 favourite foods are the giant frogs, the pupae of termites, and the locusts or 

 grasshoppers which appear in clouds at certain seasons. 



Like all inland people, the Pigmies value salt, and among the Ituri Akkas 

 it is much sought after and is currency for paying the hunters. To get carbo- 

 hydrates the Pigmies in the banana zone obtain the banana by exchange or 

 theft, although actual theft is not the rule, meat being left where the Negroes 

 can find it. Amongst the Bushmen the cycad provides the needed starch, and 

 the Asiatic races have wild rice, sweet potatoes, and other means of meeting this 

 necessity of life. Honey is especially prized as a food, and the Bushmen (before 

 the advent of the Europeans) had discovered that an intoxicating drink could 

 be made from its fermentation. 



The Pigmy races are without exception nomadic, and in their uninfluenced 

 state erect nothing worthy of the name of villages or large dwellings, having at 

 most, as amongst the Andamanese, a large building to which they can return 

 from time to time as a rendezvous, much as the Bushmen return to their caves 

 when driven by circumstances. Cold and rain are the factors which modify the 

 architecture of nomadic peoples, and the Pigmies use in the simplest forms wind 

 screens made of branches and leaves, or, when necessary, hemispherical huts 

 thatched sufficiently to make them waterproof. These may be only of materials 

 gathered from the immediate neighbourhood, or a palm-leaf thatch may be 

 prepared and carried about (Andamanese), or carefully made rush mats 

 (Bushmen), eventually improved by skins and hides. 



Reed ("Negritos of Zambales") figures a house raised off the ground, 

 and the Tapiros, living in a mountain rain-forest, build their rectangular thatched 

 huts on a platform several feet from the ground (Wollaston. p. 206). The 

 Semang utilize natural shelters under rocks and the simplest form of leaf shelters. 

 They differ from all other tribes of Pigmies by also having large leaf shelters, 

 furnished with bamboo bed places, and capable of accommodating the entire 

 tribe. All observers agree that whatever their dwellings are they pay little 

 attention to cold, and sleep soundly on the coldest nights without any covering. 



With the doubtful exception of the Tasmanians, the Andamanese are the 

 only people on record who at the time of their discovery were unacquainted with 

 the means of making fire. It seems almost certain that the Tasmanians were 

 acquainted with the friction method. The Andamanese always kept a smoulder- 

 ing log in their camps and carried fire with them when travelling. The original 

 fire of the Andamanese is supposed to have been obtained from volcanoes, of 

 which there are two on the islands, onlv one of which is now active. The 



