somewhat proficient in music. In their habits
they resembled children, being sensitive and impulsive, fond of play,
and very quick in their motions. Their readiness in gaining the elements
of education is in accord with experience in the case of other savages.
It is when studies requiring abstruse thought are reached that the
facility in acquisition of the savage races comes to an end.

With this consideration of the characteristics and habitat of the
Pygmies we may proceed to a review of their habits. The weapons which
they seem to have developed during their long upward progress, and to
which their supremacy over the wild beasts of the forest is probably
due, consist of two, the bow and arrow and the spear. The bow and arrow
are small and insignificant in appearance, and would be of little value
but for the poison which the Pygmies have somehow learned how to obtain,
and which makes them dreaded, not only by beasts, but by men. Wherever
found, from the deserts of the south to the forest of the Welle and
Aruwimi on the north, the poisoned arrow is a mark of affinity as
decided in its way as their physical resemblance. Its wide distribution
goes to indicate that it was the general weapon of the Pygmies ages ago,
when, presumably, they had all Africa for their own, and ruled supreme
over the animal world in that continent.

It is true, indeed, that the use of the poisoned arrow is not peculiar
to them, but is a somewhat common possession of savage tribes in all
parts of the earth. This makes it quite possible that it was not
original with the Pygmies, but was derived by them from other tribes. On
the other hand, in view of its great value in giving them supremacy over
the lower animals, it may well have been a primeval Pygmy invention, and
these tribes the original source of its existing wide distribution.

They possess more than one poison; one being a dark substance of the
color and consistence of pitch, which is supposed to be made out of a
species of arum. It is laid in the splints of their wooden arrows, or
spread thickly upon their iron arrowheads, when they possess these.
Another poison is of a pale glue color, which is supposed by Stanley to
be made of crushed red ants. When fresh these poisons are deadly,
producing excessive faintness, palpitation of the heart, nausea, and
deep pallor, soon followed by death. In Stanley's experience one man
died within a minute, from a mere pin prick in the breast. Others lived