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THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



to the number of more than a thousand, 

 congregated in a dense throng. During 

 the first day they were fairly quiet, and 

 contented themselves with dancing slowly 

 to the tune of the inevitable drums and 

 with firing off guns at intervals. On the 

 following days, inspired by the "pombe," 

 which they drank in immense quantities, 

 they were rather more boisterous in their 

 grief. The women, and some of the men, 

 attired themselves in a sort of very short 

 ballet-dancer's skirt made of banana 

 leaves, in which they performed some 

 very quaint and intricate dances. Some- 

 times the women would stand aside, and 

 the crowd of men, dividing into two op- 

 posite parties, would perform a war- 

 dance or mimic battle, shrieking and 

 howling like lunatics. 



Fortunately etiquette forbids the wear- 

 ing of spears and knives at a funeral, 

 and harmless reeds are carried instead, 

 or there might have been accidents. 

 There were hundreds of drums and trum- 

 pets of ivory or antelopes' horns and 

 whistles of various sorts in the crowd, 

 and the deafening din which they pro- 

 duced was still in progress when we left 

 Beni. 



There was formerly a fairly good road 

 through the Congo forest north from the 

 foot of Mount Ruwenzori, but now, 

 owing to the attitude of the "revoltes" 

 natives, it has gone out of use, and owing 

 to the action of elephants and buffaloes, 

 which swarm in this part of the forest, 

 it has gone sadly out of repair. The 

 beasts were there in such numbers that in 

 some places the air was full of the strong 

 and bitter odor, which one associates 

 with the elephants' house at the zoo. 

 The path was pounded and churned into 

 a sort of red cream by the feet of the 

 monsters, and every tree-stump was pol- 

 ished bright and smooth, where they had 

 scratched their huge sides, or, nearer the 

 ground, there the buffaloes had rubbed 

 their horns. Although there are so 

 many — you see the bushes swaying and 

 hear them crashing away perhaps within 

 a few yards of you, and hear them trum- 

 peting at night — the beasts themselves 

 are very seldom seen. 



It was in this part of the forest that 



the okapi was first discovered a few 

 years ago, and it is probable that they 

 are more plentiful, or, to be more accu- 

 rate, less scarce, in the Semliki and Ituri 

 forests than elsewhere. Any one who is 

 anxious to procure a specimen of this 

 strange creature must obtain first a spe- 

 cial permission from the Congo govern- 

 ment, and, secondly, the friendship of a 

 tribe of Pygmies ; the latter can best be 

 managed by a liberal offering of salt, 

 their most valued necessary. With rea- 

 sonable luck and the exercise of patience, 

 he might be expected to get an okapi 

 within a few months' time. 



the; pygmies 



The Pygmies live almost exclusively 

 by hunting ; they grow no crops and they 

 do not manufacture their bows and 

 spears ; these they obtain in exchange for 

 game from the other inhabitants of the 

 forest, who also supply them with ba- 

 nanas and other produce. They have no 

 settled dwellings, but each tribe or fam- 

 ily seems to have a definite hunting 

 district, whose bounds they never trans- 

 gress ; they sleep wherever they happen 

 to be, and we were constantly coming 

 across their tracks and their little shel- 

 ters, the flimsiest structures of sticks 

 thatched with leaves. 



The first Pygmy that I met greeted me 

 with a shout of "Bonzoo, Bwana (sir)"; 

 he had been for a time in a Congo post, 

 and "Bonzoo" was his version of "Bon 

 jour." He was a cheerful little person, 

 about four feet high, and he shook hands 

 effusively; his was one of the most per- 

 fectly shaped hands I have seen, but cold 

 and clammy, as the hands of most black 

 men are. Now that some of his cousins — 

 brothers, perhaps — have toured about 

 England and have exhibited in music- 

 halls, the appearance of Pygmies is 

 doubtless familiar to every one, and it 

 need hardly be remarked that even in 

 the Congo they have not all yet learned 

 to speak French.* 



*For a further description of the Pygmies 

 and the great Congo Forest, see "A Journey 

 through the Congo State," by Major Powell- 

 Cotton, in March, 1908, National Geographic 

 Magazine. 



