(270 A JOURNEY UP THE RIVER CONGO. 
from their masters in physical appearance. Still it is not 
quite certain that these dwarfs may not turn out to be a 
oreatly degraded Bantu tribe. Language is of course by 
no means a true guide, as it may often be imposed upon: 
a conquered or inferior race by stronger immigrants. 
Still it is curious that the only recorded words spoken by 
a specimen of the Wa-twa, the dwarf race on the Upper | 
Congo that Stanley encountered,* should be pure Bantu 
in character. He is reported by the great traveller to 
have said, ‘“ Mabi! mabi!” for “bad,” “ ki-rembo-rembo ” 
for “lightning,” and “Firi Niambi” for “God.” Now 
“ mabi’—meaning bad, poisonous, wicked—is used right 
down the Congo as far as Stanley Pool. It is pure 
Ki-teke, for example, and is one of the commonest words 
employed. ‘“ Ki-rembo-rembo” seems to resemble certain 
Central African terms for “finger,” | and by “ Ki-rembo- | 
rembo, firi Niambi,” the dwarf probably meant “the 
finger of God,” for in using “ Niambi” to express “God,” 
he simply employed the same word as the “ Nyambi,” 
“ Njambi,” “ Ndyambi,” “ Ndambi,” ‘“ Nzambi,” of Angola, 
the Western Congo, and the Gaboon.{ The dwarf-tribes 
are reported as being, in the interior, very hairy. Now 
hairiness is a. feature strangely absent from the Bushmen 
and Hottentots of the South, with whom it has been 
imagined that these dwarf races might have some distant 
relationships ; and, on the contrary, the Bantu tribes of 
the Congo are very hairy naturally, although most of 
them seem smooth-skinned, owing to artificial depilation. 
However, there is no doubt these dwarf races sufficiently 
differ from their neighbours to justify the qualification I 
have introduced into my assertion ; and, besides this first 
reason, there is another, in that the Congo tribes, nearing 
the coast, begin to lose their distinctive Bantu character, 
either through the degradation the coast climate seems to 
* See Stanley’s ‘ Dark Continent,’ vol. ii. pp. 172-3. 
t Lembo, mu-liémo, rémo, in divers Congo tongues. 
¢ Since this was written Mr. Stanley has supplied us with some 
vocabularies of the dwarf-tribes in the Aruwimi forests (vide “* Darkest 
Africa”); these are all Bantu in their affinities. 
