550 PYGMIES AND POREST NEGROES 



invasions of Nilotic Xegroes, Bahima (Gala), and Bantu. But the 

 general tradition among the Lendu themselves is that they came from 

 the countries to the west of the White Nile, and were forced by other 

 tribes pressing on them from the north to establish themselves on the 

 plateau countries to the west of Lake Albert. Here they found the 

 Dwarfs (as alreadj' related) existing in numbers. Thej^ drove the Dwarfs 

 out of the grass country of the high jilateau, and then, again, being 

 attacked by the Aluru and the Banyoro, the Lendu were forced to enter 

 the forest, which to a great extent they inhabit at the jiresent day, 

 living in fairly amicable relations with the Pygmies, the Mbuba, and the 

 Bantu-speaking forest folk. 



I have already stated that examples of the so-called Lendu are of a 

 distinctly superior physical type, with almost Hamitic features, and I 

 attribute this to mingling with or receiving settlers from L'uyoro and the 

 Nile countries. But as regards the bulk of the Lendu population, both Dr. 

 Stuhlmann and Dr. Shrubsall (who has contributed a most valuable analysis 

 of my anthropometrical observations) considered that they showed distinct 

 signs of affinity to the Pygmy-Prognathous type. No doubt the exj)lanation 

 is that some ordinary race of Sudanese Negroes came down from the north 

 and mingled so much with the Pygmies, whom they superseded, as to 

 absorb many of their physical characteristics. Dr. Shrubsall classes the 

 Lendu with the Pygmy group as regards some of the measurements of the 

 head and body. The physical characteristics of this type of Lendu are 

 shared by many of the Baamba, Bahuku, and Babira people of the forest 

 borderland, though all these three tribes speak Bantu languages. They 

 may be described briefly as a great want of proportion between the mass 

 of the body, and the short, feeble legs which support it. Were not my 

 photographs there to attest the proof, it would be thought, if they were 

 drawings, that the artist had in serious error attributed limbs to the torso 

 which were three times too small. The arms are long, the face is not 

 generally so simian in appearance as among the Pygmy-Prognathous group, 

 yet the nose, by its broad tip and large raised wings, often .shows affinity 

 with the forest Dwarfs. The colour of the skin is usually a dirty chocolate- 

 brown. The hair is allowed to grow as long as possible, audits length is added 

 to by the addition of string, so that the face is often surrounded by a mop 

 of little plaits, which are loaded with greese, clay, or red camwood. There is 

 a scrubby beard on the face of every man of twenty-five years and apwards. 

 jMost of the Lendu young men, like all the forest folk round them, bore the 

 upper lip with from two to eight holes. Into these holes are thrust rounded 

 pencils of quartz or sections of the stems of reeds, or small brass rings may 

 pass completely through the upper lip. The Pygmies also have their lips 

 bored in this fashion, and sometimes stick small flowers into the holes. 



