Now we will think about the other two tribes who live in this country,
but who are of quite a different race from the others. These little
red and black Pigmy peoples do not have villages at all. They are all
hunters, and each man wanders with his wife and children wherever he
chooses. Then, near the village of some chief of another tribe, he
collects grass and sticks, and builds a little house which is too
small for an ordinary man to stand upright inside. The Pigmy people
are not so dark-skinned as the other races of Central Africa, and they
are very small, not so high as an ordinary man's shoulder. They live
by hunting with a bow and arrow. The Pigmy man respects the chief
whose village he settles in, but he does not fight for him or serve
him as the other people do in his village. When he chooses, he leaves
that village and goes somewhere else. If the Pigmies want fruit or
anything the villagers have, they shoot an arrow into it. Then,
later, when they come to fetch it, they leave a packet of meat in
payment, for these little people never steal. Although they live
peaceably with the other races, they speak their own language, and
never have anything to do with other villagers, and they only marry
among their own people. The Pigmy men wear a small strip of cloth,
and the women wear a bunch of leaves for their clothes. Most people
of Central Africa like to be clean, and when there is enough water
they always wash and bathe, but the Pigmies hate water and are always
very dirty. They have no cooking-pots, but roast the meat they have
got from hunting on a stick over a fire. These Pigmy people have
learnt less than any other tribe in Africa, for they do not even know
that it is better to live in villages with others of their own race,
which is the beginning of learning most other things.