1 6o 



The National Geographic Magazine 



FLOATING VILLAGE OF KATANGA, AS SEEN FROM THE SHORE 



On the site of an abandoned garden 

 vegetation rapidly springs up, to form 

 a favorite haunt of elephant, buffalo, wild 

 pig, bush-buck, bongo — an animal even 

 rarer in the Ituri forest than the okapi — 

 and leopards, which latter are, curiously 

 enough, never to be found far from a 

 native settlement. In coloration the ani- 

 mals of the forest have a tendency to 

 become darker in shade than those of the 

 plains. A notable example of this is the 

 ratel (Mellivora cottoni), which is en- 

 tirely black, while in the south and west 

 of Africa the whole upper surface of the 

 body, head, and tail are an ashy gray. 



Mica abounds in the neighborhood of 

 Mawambi, and the whitewash used for 

 the houses in the post is so full of minute 

 fragments that the Avails sparkle in the 

 sunshine. 



THE PYGMIES 



This station is a great center of the 

 pygmies. They live in small communi- 

 ties of six to eighteen men, with their 

 wives and families. Each group is gov- 

 erned by an elder, but there does not ap- 

 pear to be any recognized supreme chief, 



and the communities are often at war 

 with one another. They have no perma- 

 nent villages ; their low primitive huts,, 

 thatched with the large leaf of Sarcophry- 

 nium arnoldianum, are built in a little 

 clearing in the forest, and are moved, 

 not only for their customary biannual 

 migration, or when hunting in that dis- 

 trict is becoming difficult, but also on the 

 death of any member of the group, or 

 also when they have killed some large 

 animal. It is easier, in the latter case,, 

 to move the village to the animal than it 

 is to move the animal to the village. 

 Their time is passed in hunting and col- 

 lecting honey, wild fruits, and roots. 

 While they kill the larger animals, even 

 elephants at times, with a short-shafted, 

 broad-bladed spear, by far the greater 

 quantity of their game is taken by driving 

 it into nets. 



The pygmy is a most expert climber, 

 and no matter how high the wild bees- 

 may have their nest, he will scale up and 

 cut it out in an incredibly short space of 

 time. Each group of pygmies attaches 

 itself to the chief of one of the other for- 

 est tribes, whom they supply with meat,. 



